"If you want to spend a total of nearly two hours waiting for your breakfast, this is the place for you! Queuing for 5 minutes to be ‘welcomed’, moving your own (uncleared) tables together … and no, they weren’t cleaned for us on arrival. After 10 minutes a waitress came over as we had 4 menus and she wanted to take one away but promised to come back to take our order. She didn’t. A further 10 minutes later, having watched four tables who had come in after we arrived being attended to, I walked to the nearest waiter and asked for our order to be taken next. 5 minutes later somebody came to take our order. We mentioned we had been waiting quite some time already. There was no apology forthcoming, nor any indication how long we would have to wait. Within our order we asked for a jug of tap water as well as teas and coffees. A further 10 minutes later, not even the water had arrived. We called the waitress who had taken our order over to ask for at least our water, and ideally the teas as well. It took a further 10 minutes for both to arrive. Some time later we asked when our food would arrive. We were asked if we had been advised on arrival that food orders were taking 30 to 40 minutes. We had not been advised that was the delay. Three of our meals then arrived but not my own. We expressed disappointment that we had waited around an hour and 30 minutes. A further 5 minutes elapsed and a different waitress appeared with a slip of paper and get this…. told us we had ‘only’ ordered our food 55 minutes ago. Quite how this was supposed to appease us, I’m not sure. As I was advising the waitress of our dissatisfaction, a lady chef approached, having heard us. She was quickly appalled at the lack of service we had received. We pointed out how many other later arrivals had received and even finished their food, whilst mine had yet to appear. Further horrified, she left to personally cook my missing eggs on toast, bringing them herself. “Happy Birthday to me!” I said (it was). At least this lady apologised and said she would not charge for my eggs on toast. Minutes later, the owner started clearing up around us. We expressed our intense disappointment and he uttered markedly insincere apologies whilst STILL trying to justify the unjustifiable! ‘Anything else?’ He asked ‘Well a significant discount would be appreciated” I said I’m not making this next part up….. “We work on very small margins, if I offered you a discount, I’d have to do it for everyone” We pointed out that his chef had already undertaken to remove my eggs on toast from our bill. He looked intensely unhappy at that news. My rough estimation of the raw material costs of eggs on toast is less than £1. In short, a dreadful experience due to a collective absence of attention to customer care, which clearly comes from the top down. We won’t be going to Honeydales Tea Shop again."
