IMO you shouldn't have to order ahead online to a place that is technically a fast food type joint. If I was doing carry out it makes more sense. If that's the only way you are going to avoid a 30-45 minute wait for your food to eat at the location that is a horrible business model for that type of place. You are going to lose a lot of potential customers that may just stop in on a whim for the first time like I did who will be disappointed and frustrated when they spend that long waiting on food that shouldn't take that long to prepare. It's probably not a "must have" type of place to be banking on most of your dine-in customers knowing that they ought to order ahead. Some people here said they even had to wait longer than the time they quoted them for carry out too.
I may sound old saying this which I'm not technically that "old" at 39 but what happened to businesses striving/taking pride for having good service these days instead of consumers just accepting subpar service as the norm? Look at all the business a place like Hickory Park does where they turn tables pretty quickly even with a high volume of people dining there. Even the chain joints like Old Chicago, BWW, Applebees, etc. with a lot bigger variety of items on their menus and more volume churn out food quicker and you don't need to order ahead there to get in/out in a reasonable amount of time. Heck I got a free basket meal at Culvers last month because I had to wait 10 minutes over my lunch break and found out someone had either given my order to someone else or misplaced the order slip. I wasn't upset at all, they usually are quick and it was probably an honest mistake but the manager apologized and asked if I wanted a free concrete (it was terribly cold out that day so that did not sound good to me) I just said give me a larger size of fries or something and I'd be good but instead he handed me a card for a free basket combo which I was not expecting. That's the kind of service that will keep a customer coming back when you acknowledge the service they got was not up to par instead of making excuses for it.
There's 1 place I have yet to go back to in Ames after a horrible experience years ago and that is West Towne Pub. We got there plenty early before a game and it wasn't that busy when we sat down. It took our waitress nearly 15 minutes to even get us a menu after we had to make a point to ask her for them then after waiting nearly an hour for our order to come out after we were told multiple times it "would be out really soon" and the place starting to empty out to head to the game we said screw it and asked for our drink bill and canceled our food order. The manager came out and apologized and said they "got caught off guard with the game day crowd." We said that was a lame excuse because you damn well knew there was a game today in advance and could staff accordingly. Didn't get offered an many places do when they screw up. I'll probably try the place again at some point but that 1 experience turned everyone with us off of going there all this time. I'm a pretty patient customer for the most part but it's not like these places don't know that on a game day you are going to get more business than usual and need to be staffed accordingly so you can get people in & out in a reasonable amount of time once they place their order.
