Saving expenses at the cost of your revenue

Cuisine Greater Taipei Restaurants
1

[Oops - not enough sleep last night - just edited the title]

There’s a certain sandwich shop in Tienmu that I go to quite a lot. It’s really way too expensive, but once a week it’s a good place to enjoy a cheese sandwich, a can of something fruity, and a little time out reading the newspaper.

When I first started going there, the sandwiches were thick with cheese and you got a big handful of chips on the side. Nowadays, the cheese lurks somewhere within the mounds of lettuce, and the chips, last time I went, totaled … three. This alone is a bad business move. I’ve seen it time and again as a frequenter of service establishments - business slows down, so they start cutting back: fewer staff, cheaper ingredients, smaller portions, etc. Big mistake. You do this, and you’re sending a very clear message to your customers that (a) you don’t care about them, and (b) you’re going under. I get the same impression whenever I walk into JB’s of a lunchtime and have to ask if they’re open because all the lights are turned off downstairs. More, when you do get s few customers coming back in, you’ve just blown your one chance to capitalize and impress.

Then I noticed that the potato salad was way too often tasting like vinegar. Whether this was because the ingredients were cheap or the food was spoiled, I don’t know, but I don’t buy it any more. I just get my sandwich.

I get bored with the same old cheese sandwich after a while and ask if I can pay extra for brie. No problem! When the bill comes, it’s about NT$330 for the sandwich and a drink and a chocolate bar (the latter totaling NT$70). That means I paid NT$260 for the brie sandwich, compared to NT$135 for the Dutch cheese - an extra NT$125 for a NT$100 piece of cheese. It turns out they were charging me for the brie on top of the Dutch cheese sandwich … but I don’t get the Dutch cheese! I asked for it, or for the price to be lowered, but it went over their heads.

A while ago I thought I’d risk a potato salad once more. It tasted OK. The next day I was sick as hell with food poisoning. But still I go back for the brie sandwich when I’m feeling decadent, because I can’t buy one anywhere else. So I get one today to take away. NT$330 for the sandwich, a drink, and chips. I get in the car and take a bite so I can savour the flavour while driving - yeuck! Something was badly wrong. I looked inside the sandwich. Apart from a strange-looking piece of tomato, everything looked normal, except for some rather drab (and scarce) lettuce. I try again, just in case it’s my taste buds playing up - yeuck! This was not right.

So, I drove back and pointed out that I was unable to eat the sandwich. They looked inside. The guy picked up a piece of the brie and put it to his nose and mouth. I was told there was a problem with the brie. They made another sandwich - this time with cambazola. I waited for that, bought some Bounty chocolate pieces as a goodwill gesture for them replacing my sandwich without question, then dashed off, now late for my next appointment.

I tried the sandwich. It tasted fine. I finished one half in a hurry. Then I took a bite out of the second half - yeuck! That same disgusting taste! WTF! It obviously wasn’t the cheese then. I looked inside the sandwich. Everything looked normal, apart from a strange-looking piece of tomato and some drab lettuce … wait a minute! Did they re-use the salad?! Tell me that’s impossible. Tell me a restaurant wouldn’t put the ingredients from a foul-tasting sandwich into the next one they make for you. Tell me they accepted the loss on the lettuce and tomato along with the brie. Tell me that.

Don’t tell me they were so friggin’ cheap and so friggin’ insensitive to their customers that they used shit from a bad sandwich to save money on making a new one!

Now I’m hungry and pissed off, so I reach for my NT$260 bag of Bounty bars. I manage to fondle my way through a wrapper in the darkness of my car and shove a piece in my mouth, desperate for the oozing taste of smooth milk chocolate melting in my mouth to release that sweet, succulent, coconut interior that takes one away to tropical - yeuck! Why oh why oh why can Wendel’s Bakery supply their customers with gorgeous, delicious, perfectly presented European confectioneries and chocolates imported from half way around the globe, but this place always manages to store theirs in such a way as to frig up the chocolate and turn it into a dry, pasty, white-encrusted ingot of flavorless crap?!

Needless to say, I have granted that little establishment way too many second chances already; I won’t be going back. :fume:

Now, name that sandwich bar.

2

Please do name it so I never go there by accident. I hate places like this and they all deserve to be shut down. They provide a good service for a while, and then it sucks, and you periodically waste money hoping it will improve.

Best to have a veggie sub at subber then, Stray Dog. They seem to keep it fresh and clean there. Not 200 bucks, either.

3

My fave is Sub Zone, on XinSheng S. Rd, just south of Heping on the SW corner of Da An. Veggie meat foot-long with cheese and salad and all the dressings for far, far less than NT$200. Mmm.

I don’t want to name the shop, because I like the owner and he rescues animals. I’ll leave it to someone else. Others will recognize it easily. I’m just disappointed that business owners really don’t see the value of taking care of customers any more.

4

I hear you brother. I really hear you.

Why is it that when a clothing store goes out or is going out of business they put everything on sale and the customers are ecstatic and buy everything? You can’t get the customers out of the store and then the owner collects enough money to launch another venture or continue the present one.

When a restaurant is in trouble they cut back on quality and/or quantity and any customers they had leave and never come back?

That is rhetorical by the way.

And I’m not going to name names regarding your sandwich shop. :laughing:

5

Stray Dog,
You know the owner, and he/she should be a reasonable person, so why don’t you mention your concerns with the owner.

It has been repeated may times on this forum, that when dissatisfied with service or food at establishments, the best is to confront the staff and owners right away.

And, as you know the owner…Help that person to help itself from selfdestruction.

6

[quote=“X3M”]Stray Dog,
You know the owner, and he/she should be a reasonable person, so why don’t you mention your concerns with the owner.

It has been repeated may times on this forum, that when dissatisfied with service or food at establishments, the best is to confront the staff and owners right away.

And, as you know the owner…Help that person to help itself from selfdestruction.[/quote]

I have done re. the costly cheese and the chocolate (not the first time with that, either, you see). No joy. There’s a reluctance on their part to accept fault, even when it stares them in the face. I’ve mentioned that the potato salad tastes off, like vinegar, and no response was offered. I haven’t mentioned the reduced sizes.

I wanted to go back and tell them that the sarnie was still inedible, but you can probably understand that I can’t see the point.

It’s a shame. It’s a nice place - very comfortable and relaxing - and the sandwiches are usually excellent. They sell all manner of foreign foods, albeit expensively. And I’m always offered some chatter when I’m there alone.

The only time anything was taken on board was when I got angry (the guy kept insulting me as part of the conversation), and I don’t want to do that again.

I dunno. Let me sleep on it. It’s been a bad day and a difficult week, so maybe I’ll be more inclined to be reasonable after a good and peaceful night’s sleep.

7

I wish you good luck in you endavours. It is not easy to teach an old dogs new tricks, or even stay the same all the time - evolution can work both ways.

8

Bada bing bada boom.

9

Bade bing Bade boom.[/quote]

Yeah, there went my “native” aliby that I never had - silly me :laughing:

10

Name the place.
Don’t post something like this and then leave it to someone else to say who the shop is.
On infrequent occasions I’m in Tianmu on occasion on business. Sometimes I grab a sandwich before heading home.
Name the shop so I don’t waste my time and money.

11

Don’t name the place it is unethical.

Your gripe is legitimate because you have a reference point. For the rest, they are bandwagon jumpers.

12

[quote=“Fox”]Don’t name the place it is unethical.

Your gripe is legitimate because you have a reference point. For the rest, they are bandwagon jumpers.[/quote]

Why is it unethical Fox? Posts that say, “This place sucks!” and offer no reasoning, are temped or flamed. Here’s a post where the OP gives his personal experience about an eatery.

Why is it unethical to name the place?

People slam Grandma Nitties all the time. Why is this one different? Most of us probably don’t go there anyway. Isn’t naming the place a public service message?

13

People can make up their own minds.

He’s made up his mind.

He is discussing a relative situation how it was and what it has become; he feels they are going cheap. Naming it because of this reason would be unethical. Naming it because you can prove you got food poisioning, ripped off and crappy service is a different question.

14

Sounds as if have to start thinking about opening a good sandwich shop somewhere up in Taipei …

15

After such a long, detailed and specific story to not name the place might well qualify as ‘un-ethical.’

And BP…I’m certain you could do a smashing bidness!

16

fox wrote [quote]Don’t name the place. it is unethical. [/quote]

Fox, do you know the place stray dog is talking about? Do you know the owner?

17

No.

18

A good compromise is for interested parties to receive a pm of the place so they can avoid it, without posting it.

19

I read this thread believing from the title that it was just a general why do they do that? rant. I’m sure the rest of you have all frequented eateries that have gone down hill, I know I have.

However, this turned out not to be a discussion of such places in general, but an actual review of a place where many of us might actually go. I don’t know the OP, so don’t take this the wrong way, but did any of you read his long winded diatribe because you give a rat’s ass about his general culinary experiences?

The OP has tried to discuss the issue with the establishment’s owner, and by his own admission the owner simply cannot or will not recognize the problem. He has discharged his obligations to the owner. By vitue of having made such a post publicly, the OP now has an obligation to inform his readers of the establishment to which he refers. Honestly, straydog, if you’re not going to name names, what was your point?

Those of you who are of Fox’s bent, that you should make up your own mind, are free to do so. As jdsmith noted, why should this particular eatery be sacrosanct?

20

I don’t think it is sacrosanct. I just think if they are changing tack, it is not ethical to say don’t go there.

In my view, people should be very careful what they say about another person’s business. That is their livelihood.

However, if it really is a stinker, I have no problem with mentioning the name of the place.