All About Village Inn
Written: Oct 03 '01 (Updated Jan 14 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice new building, Clean atmosphere
Cons: TV Dinner Quality, Poor Service
The Bottom Line: Village Inn = TV Dinner Quality at a high cost accompanied by bad service.
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| chasivation's Full Review: Village Inn |
Since relocating to a new state in the past few months, I have had many “first impressions” impressed on me from many different businesses that are new to me. One of my new “first impressions” was Village Inn. I cannot express enough how important first impressions are to businesses that needs new customers in today’s new economy. And that is why I write about my first experiences in so many of my reviews.
First Impressions
My friend and I arrived at a brand new Village Inn restaurant located in Coralville, Iowa right around 9:00 PM. First glances were great, the parking lot seemed to be well kept up and the building looked nice. Of course this could be because it is a new building and that this “glitz” will soon wear off. Time will tell.
Hostess Service
When we first walked into the door, the aroma was very nice. It smelled like good home cooking. We were greeted promptly and asked if we wanted smoking or non-smoking. We asked for non-smoking but there were no non-smoking tables available so we agreed to sit in the smoking section because at the time there was hardly anyone in that section.
Now, I must take just a moment and get on a small soapbox of mine. I personally think that the Hostess should ask if you would like a drink while you decide on your dinner. Considering how long it sometimes takes for a waiter/waitress to arrive at a table, my request seems reasonable.
Wait Staff
Speaking of the time it takes for a waiter/waitress to arrive, it was 10 minutes before we saw our waiter. One waiter did come over before then to say that someone would be with us shortly. The waiter seemed anxious, so much that he did not seem to have time to take our order. We both ordered the Chicken Fried Chicken dinners with country gravy and salad.
About 8 minutes later we received our drinks. The atmosphere was quite nice. The wait staff was wearing team colors that showed support for their local college athletics. About 5 minutes later the later returned with a problem. It would seem that the kitchen mistakenly put brown beef gravy on one of our dinners. It seemed odd that they could have made such a mistake since we both ordered the same thing. Instead of the waiter offering to remake both dinners (remake both so that both dinners would be hot and arrive at the same time) he asked if we would eat the incorrect one. I agreed because I hate to make a scene at a restaurant. I thought that I could eat it but it just was not good at all. It tasted very much like a frozen TV dinner like you get in a store. I was very disappointed.
Checkout
The checkout process was very long. We waited at least 15 minutes to checkout. It was not that the line was long; there was only one couple ahead of us. It seemed that the girl who was checking out did not know, or was not sure of what she was doing. This could have been a result of the recent opening and poor training.
Overall, I think that if I wanted TV dinner quality then I would just grab one out of the freezer rather than going back to Village Inn for the same thing which costs more and is surrounded by bad service.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
chasivation
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Member: Charles Simpson
Location: Iowa City, IA
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 7 members
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