With lots of fanfare, they opened up about a month ago and with little fanfare they went from a line out of the door to what now seems destined to the graveyard of failed restaurants.
The reason for the diminished crowds can be broken down for the following reason
- cold stale bagels. When I walked out of the place last Saturday at 11AM and bit into my poppy-seed bagel with lox-spread and it tasted like a hard stale roll, you knew the place didn't stand a chance. You MUST have fresh bagels on a Saturday morning, I can walk into a bodega and get a three day old bagel, I go to a bagel store to get a fresh one.
- inconsistent pricing. A plain bagel is $0.80, a whole-wheat one is $0.90 and a poppy seed one is $0.95. I've never seen it before and for good reason, nobody wants to make their decision of which bagel to choose based on price.
- bad layout. They have no flow to the restaurant. It's a typical storefront with a few small tables in the front, with the prep counter partitioned off by the big deli-counter fridges on the left wall. The resister is in the front part of the prep counter so the idea is that you order at the back of the store and make your way to the front to pay. Problem is the place is either too small or they figured for too much space for the prep-station because there is no room for the start of the line..
First of all How can you figure to start a line at the back of a store it makes no sense because it limits you immediately. It allows for exactly one person to stand on deck which on a busy weekend morning means you can't service your customers. It forces a double snake line going from the middle of the store to the back and then back again. With no room to breath, it's completely claustrophobic. There is nothing I hate more than trying to decide which expensive stale bagel to order while surrounded by the stench of my neighbors friday nights hangover.
But worse than all of it is the:
- customer service. I ordered my poppy with lox-spread and get rung up for $5 - look at the guy confused. The price clearly states a bagel with flavored cream-cheese including lox-spread is $2.95. I ask him about it and he says the pricing changed. This is the first weekend they are open. They have 100,000 flyers printed and a huge sandwich board posted and they go and change prices?
Well that in itself is one thing but I can see they miscalculated something, what gets me is that they didn't mention it to me when I either
a) ordered it
b) rang me up
They just glanced over it and hoped I wouldn't notice. Being a frugal fool, obviously it didn't get past me and I called him out. He said prices had gone up or something but he'd 'give it to me at the old pricing'.
I don't like being made the fool and I especially don't like having a store-owner try to take credit for trying to 'give me' something after he just tried to hide a price increase from me.
It's disheartening that on your first weekend open in a new neighborhood you try to get one over on your customers
Bagel-shops are staples in a neighborhood and people will swear by theirs and force friends to come from far and away. You need the word of mouth, a good vibes and most importantly a good bagel to survive...so far you've failed in every regard.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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