Yesterday I and a couple of friends went to check out the new 1280 in between Clubsfest and the PJ Parade... here's just a little overview of our experience...

4:00 - One of my friends and I arrived at 1280... already we could identify that they needed to have more staff on the job...the place was pretty busy...we waited for 10 minutes to get a table, to which we had to move ourselves...

4:15 - Our 2nd friend arrives to make a party of 3

4:30 - We get fed up and flag over a server to at least get some service she gets us water (at this time I'm thinking, they didn't cut down their beverage menu did they?)

4:35 - Finally a server comes to take our order (we've already been here for 1/2 an hour!) - she also gets 1 of my friends and I real drinks... (every one likes a little diversity in their menu, right?) - we also happen to look across the dining area, and come to the realization that, apparently some servers, at a very busy time of the day, happen to have nothing to do... interesting.

5:00 - After another 25 minutes of just drinking water and pop, I have to use the Men's room... Let's just say that not much has improved about the washrooms...

5:05 - When I get back, the nachos that one of my friends ordered has arrived... a Mediocre dish... not too spectacular at all...

5:10 - We FINALLY get our food! (And the server got 1 of my friends and I's orders messed up - I got a peppercorn Burger, when I ordered the MSU Lumberjack Burger...)

5:25 - We now have to leave this lengthy experience, because the 3 of us are performing along the PJ Parade route... wait... where's our server? Oh, that's right... nowhere in sight...

5:30 - We start searching for our server, and try and track down a take-out tray for 1 of my friends to pack up her Lattice Fries... we REALLY need to go...

5:35 - a Manager goes to track down our server so we can get our bills, pay and leave the restaurant...

5:40 - We finally get a take-out tray, and our bills... but one of those really-not-busy servers had already decided to clear the table, including the food my friend was going to pack up to take with her.

At this time we had to leave otherwise we would be late... So we didn't force it.

---For a restaurant that definitely needs some revival, that experience definitely deterred me from returning. You'd think that they would try to present the best possible experience around this time of year, especially when there have been many welcome week reps bringing their new kids to the restaurant - ones that didn't have the opportunity to experience the poor standards of the former Quarters. I guess they're working on a different financial plan - one that doesn't plan on making any money for 1280...

I'd like to hear how other people are finding the new 1280 experience... was it a similar experience than that of Quarters? Better? Worse?

Let's remember how much money Quarters lost last year (see http://thesil.ca/?p=2027 - it was almost a half a million dollars!). I believe that 1280 is still under the same management, and possibly staffed with some of the same people. Perhaps it's time for a change, and people like Holowacj may be what's required to finally effect it.

As to experiences, last year I was seated in an empty Quarters (literally no other patrons were there) and waited over 20 minutes before I finally walked out. Keep in mind that I was seated by a server, so it wasn't as though nobody knew I was there. I know that this isn't a 1280 experience, but it seems that not much has changed. I haven't got any newer stories since I never went back. That time was not my first visit, nor was it the first time I was disappointed by some aspect of either the service or the food. I much more enjoy visits to the Phoenix. The food's similar, but the servers are prompt and very friendly.

How was the food? Hot and nice, or tepid and passable?

I went yesterday too.

It does seem like there are waitresses just standing around not doing anything.

You have to wait for them to clear the tables so we could sit. Apart from that, the service was fine.
The food on the otherhand was pretty much the same.

Yeah... I definitely forgot to write about another 1280 experience... well, it wasn't much of an experience... me and about 4 or 5 other band members (from the new McMaster Marching Band) went over to 1280 to grab a quick drink/bite to eat before the Game last Monday (imagine if 1280 was as successful as the Marauders that day! 52-21!!!! Go, Mac, Go!)... we waited standing AT THE BAR for 10 minutes, and no one would serve us... so we left to find another place to spend our money...

Change is definitely the right direction...

Are you kidding? You had to wait that long just to get DRINKS? That's sad. For an establishment that wants to make money, assuming the customer just wants some tap water is a bad way to go about it. (water is free, after all. Also, I'm just assuming because I can't imagine a student bar/club/resto charging for water.)

As the friend that arrived at 1280 with Holowatyj yesterday, I share the same frustration. These are my experiences at 1280 thus far:

Welcome Week Rep Kickoff, last Thursday night:
-super fun evening, good music, could have used an extra bartender, overall good impression of the bar

Monday September 7th (lunch time)
-my friends (with whom I was on my way to join up with) went to 1280 to get us a table. The staff weren't responding and they weren't being served. They left.

WHY WHY WHY WHY are people showing up to a restaurant to be ignored?!?! This is why quarters was running a deficit.

Monday September 7th (dinner time)
-despite our annoyances from the occurrence earlier that day, we thought we would give it another shot
-we arrived at the restaurant, walked all the way in, smiled at 4 servers and proceeded to sit down until one of the servers walked over an informed us that they were actually shutting down for Monday Night Social

They needed to close, fine, but why did 4 people all watch us walk all the way down the hallway and sit down before informing us that they were closing. Why the doors were open, and no signs were posted are beyond me.

Wednesday September 9th (dinner time)
-this is when the occurrence that Holowatyj described went down
-the overall atmosphere of the bar was good, the decoration was good, great lighting, love the layout, I love the wall the separates the dance floor during the day
-service was just F*CKING BRUTAL, if you thought that it couldn't possibly be worse than quarters, think again.
----there were no free tables when we arrived, however there was one table that we would have been happy to take if a server would come over a clear it from the last people
----30 minutes for a greeting from our server??? Not acceptable.
----I heard that it was the kitchen staff that was behind, but this does not excuse the poor service from our server
----It took another 30 minutes AFTER we FINISHED eating to get the bill, we had to play a game of "ask every other server to find our server" for 30 minutes.
----I had to go chasing around for a container to put my food in to go, and by the time I got back to my table with the container, my food had been cleared.
----As I looked around the bar, all I saw was that these F*CKING DUMB*SS AIRHEADS that were supposed to be waitressing were just standing around either talking or with their fingers in their bum

It's a real shame that they didn't change the management because that we the only real problem before. The interior of the new bar is better, and the food is better (amazing actually), but the food and interior of the old bar was still satisfactory.

Overall, I thought that the renovations were great, and the menu is great too, but the real problems have still not been solved.

My experience at 1280 was slightly different from the above posts. I got there around 4:15 p.m. yesterday with a couple of other maroons reps. The servers at the (round bar thingy) was fast and quick. quite friendly too. The other complain i would have is that it took a while for the food to show up, about 45 minutes. Other than that it wasn't too bad.

Originally Posted by Stan

My experience at 1280 was slightly different from the above posts. I got there around 4:15 p.m. yesterday with a couple of other maroons reps. The servers at the (round bar thingy) was fast and quick. quite friendly too. The other complain i would have is that it took a while for the food to show up, about 45 minutes. Other than that it wasn't too bad.

45 mins is pretty bad, if you've been to restaurants you should know...in fact if it takes more than 20 minutes, tips start to go down.

Originally Posted by adrian

45 mins is pretty bad, if you've been to restaurants you should know...in fact if it takes more than 20 minutes, tips start to go down.

Agreed. I was torn a new one by someone for pointing out things like this in another thread but if things are well-organized, the type of food that's served at 1280 doesn't take more than 7 to 10 minutes to get out to patrons.

If it's very busy at the place, it might be a bit more but with some good planning, a good head cook, and a good waitstaff, it can still be reasonable. A way to figure out where the bottleneck may be is to look at the temperature of the food. Cold food means either a disorganized distribution system or careless waitstaff. If one item is cold and another hot, then there could be something amiss with how the cooks are putting plates together.

I've been hearing a lot about bad service, and I'm glad you're all talking.

I'm not the only SRA member who has been paying attention either... I promise you all I'll be looking into this personally. I'll be talking to the VP Admin and I'll be bringing it up at our first meeting.

As for my food experience, the food wasn't that bad... wasn't spectacular, but it was ok...

The temperature was what I expect from good restaurants, but other tables (especially one that had sat down after we had already ordered) had received their dessert that they also ordered, before we even got our entree... and it was the same server too...

wow this is suppose to be a place where you can go grab a eat and then go back to class or something... its not even a fancy resturant or anything where you actually need to wait for your food to made. A 30-45 minute wait is ridiculus.

A lot of you seem to be forgetting that 1280 opened a few days ago.

And as a result the staff is brand new, meaning they are going to make a lot of mistakes. Same goes for the shift supervisors and the like.

I was a manager of an MSU service last year, and it takes a good month or so for university staff to get a handle on their positions. This is especially true if you've never worked in a food service industry before: there is a lot to keep on track of and it can be overwhelming sometimes.

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ghjkghkghkgh - the loss wasn't from the 2008-2009 year, it was from the 2007-2008 year, which was two years ago.

Originally Posted by lorend

A lot of you seem to be forgetting that 1280 opened a few days ago.

And as a result the staff is brand new, meaning they are going to make a lot of mistakes. Same goes for the shift supervisors and the like.

I was a manager of an MSU service last year, and it takes a good month or so for university staff to get a handle on their positions. This is especially true if you've never worked in a food service industry before: there is a lot to keep on track of and it can be overwhelming sometimes.

Thank makes it more understandable, though one would hope for a bit better training out of the gate. Do you know about how many of the staff and managers are brand new as compared to the numbers of those returning?


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ghjkghkghkgh - the loss wasn't from the 2008-2009 year, it was from the 2007-2008 year, which was two years ago.

My bad, sorry about that. I'd imagine though that the management would have known about some portion of the loss, even without the Deloitte report. Was there a statement released as to what was done to improve last year?