Erin L.
Yelp
NOT kid-friendly...unless you enjoy being passive aggressively mom shamed for every trivial thing your kids do.
We went to OB yesterday at 2pm as our first stop on our Barks for Beers outing that day. There were all of 10 patrons inside their HUGE taproom upon our arrival. Our party included myself, my husband, our toddler girls (ages 3 & 1), and 2 of our friends, so we basically doubled their business just by showing up. Except we weren't welcomed there apparently, at least that's how we felt.
Within the first few minutes, some lady who was sitting at the bar on a laptop got up and approached my 3 year old and reprimanded her for pushing around her baby sister's stroller and asked her where her parents were. Turns out, she was an employee of OB as she was later seen behind the bar and did have an OB branded shirt on. We were like 15 feet away from her, had eyes on her the entire time, and didn't see any harm in her pushing around an empty stroller as again, there were hardly any people around and she wasn't damaging anything. Just a toddler doing toddler stuff. She was even making friends with other customers and people were telling us how adorable and social she was. Never for a second thought she was ruining anyone's experience.
Maybe 20 minutes later, a bartender reprimanded my husband for not cleaning up the Jenga blocks we'd put on the floor for our girls to play with. Apparently we'd unintentionally blocked the only door they can use to get additional kegs when they run out. There are no signs saying not to block the door, and our kids had been playing there for several minutes and no one had said anything so we didn't know. It's also not the only door leading to their brew area, which was dark and empty. We hadn't picked up the blocks yet only because they weren't done playing with them. I'd already picked up the Exploding Kittens cards and put them away as my 3 year old got them without asking me and I didn't want her to tear or bend any of them so other guests could still enjoy them. I gave them Jenga blocks because they couldn't break them. Well we then picked up the blocks anyway, and moved our stuff away from the forbidden door and then that lady walks up to me and says yet again that they need access to that door and we can't block it. OMG, we get it. We brought children, but we are not children; no need to talk to us like we are. We packed up our stuff and left within minutes and went to a better brewery down the street where the bartender was friendly and engaged - totally different vibe.
Every single job I've had since entering the workforce has been customer-facing. I would NEVER treat customers the way we were treated yesterday.
Be kind to everyone, but especially your paying customers. Educate people. Don't make assumptions. Put up a sign if there needs to be a permanent clearance in front of a door. Don't reprimand other people's children unless there's a good reason. Get out of the service industry if you can't be nice.
Breweries are supposed to be fun & chill, but that's not been my experience at OB (see past review from over 6 years ago) and yesterday was the final straw. We won't be back, but I hope y'all have better luck!