Changing Tastes

OLIVE GARDEN SUCKS. its and insult to all us real italians that know what good food is. the bread stix are a joke and taste like there from family dollar store. BENNIGANS.... we hale you great friemaster of the 80s, and we will miss happy hour to. No olive garden is on the short list to im sure, as all things AMERICANA are.

I stopped going to Bennigan's when I realized the food was no better than what I made at home, cost more and was served to me by 16-year olds more interested in getting their hands on the greeter than on my money. Quite frankly, Fridays will be next. The servers have gotten younger and aren't well trained anymore.

your kidding? olive garden sucks and its an insult to us italians, especially those of us that are dated... if you know what i mean. its just another resurant chain that buy food from cheep supplyers. Almost all of theese big chains have the same game. but you no what? thats america and i LOVE it. the cheeser the better. will miss you BENNIGANS..... HALE TO YOU great fry king, onther part of americana we love is gone.

The problem with Bennigan's and the others, is they take customers for granted. The key to all restaurant business is repeat customers. Treat customers right and they will come back, even when time are hard, because they enjoy the experience. I hope the other restaurant operators are paying attention. You could be next.

Restaurant employees need to treat all customers with respect, even if you don't care for them and/or don't expect a big tip. The fact they are patronizing you place of employment means you still have a job. See how big of a tip you get at the unemployment office. If you don't like working with the public, find another line of work.

Whether or not you agree with it, the customer is always right and has the choice of where to spend their money. I don't go back to restaurants where I am treated like crap and taken for granted. And I could afford to eat out every day if I wanted. When I am treated right, I tip 30%. When the server shows they don't really care about my business they get 10% or less.

I've never understood the allure of Olive Garden--it's faux Italian. I live in an area where there are dozens of real, family-owned Italian restaurants, and the food at those places is much better. As for Bennigan's, it's no different from Friday's, Chili's, Friendly's, Ruby Tuesdays or a hundred other chain restaurants. They're only a half-step up from Burger King or McDonalds. Lousy food, rude service and unreasonable prices--it's all part of the strip-malling of America. Let them go out of business. The world will be better off.

My husband worked at Bennigan's part time well he is in school. We have two young children and I work full time. Money is tight but we make it work. The day he found out he no longer had a job was not the end of the world because we knew we could make it work and he is currently looking for another serving job. What put the nail in the coffin is when his last check did not clear and the bank charge us a "charge back fee." He worked three weeks and now we have no idea if he will get paid for his time. The worst part for us is that is it time he had to spend away from his family that he will never get back.

I worked for the company for almost 11 years as a server and then key manager. We lost everything due to corporate's neglegence. They gave up caring about the restaurants a long time ago and then on tuesday they showed their employees how much they didn't care about them either. From servers straight up to area directors, we don't get our last paychecks. It really stinks that there's not much we can do about it except find other jobs and hope our bills don't get too far behind.

Olive Garden is another kind of resturant, bennigans is not the same style of resturant thats why the Olive Garden gets more business. Bennigans has very good taco salads thats what I ordered when I went there also the Olive Garden is very expensive but very good. Bennigans needs to change there menu or just add some more healthier things.

It's not the menu, it's not the economy it's the customer service. Get ready Friday's.

The very worst in customer service. Then again, how does Friday's stay alive? The same for Chili's, please let these restaurants go under, to be replaced with restaurants that give a damn about customer service instead of excuses.

Bottom line: the economy didn't kill Bennigan's, they cut their own throat years ago.

Bennigans sold rotten food. I'm glad they went bankrupt. I hope Chili's and Olive Garden will be next.

It's a damn shame that these two once fine restaurants, Bennigan's and Steak & Ale, were run into the ground by incompetent and criminal management. I used to eat at both of these places, but they have only been shells of their former selves for many years now. It seemed like overnight that they became rundown, ill-maintained, and an overall horrible dining experience. The apathy was very apparent. But, that is what you get when there is no accountability and no one gives a damn. No one in upper management will lose a dime as a result of their incompetence and criminality, and they will now move on and ruin some other restaurant. Meanwhile, the low-level employees who really needed the work, will be the ones who are hurt.

I think of all the casual dining restaurants Bennigans has by far the best menu. My mouth starts watering looking at the selection. We've been attending the Bennigans location in Gainesville, FL routinely and it seemed that 90% of the time we were like one of only three tables ever filled. We went often on Friday and Saturday too. Preceding the drop off in traffic we had had several really bad service experiences there but we loved the menu. Most people that got bad service (like waiting an hour or cold food) probably just didn't come back. Till today I used to joke with my wife that our location must be a franchisee with Mob connections who was just using the store to luander money. Now I know that upper management at Bennigans has been asleep at the switch for years. Our location (based on what we saw) should have been shut down at least 2 years ago. There wasn't any appearence of competent management, very little marketing for a college town, and no appearence of anybody who even was trying to turn our local location around. Except for our local location all the other Bennigans I've been too have been busy and often packed. This location was probably losing 50000 a month. This company should never had borrowed so much money. Plus they should have done what all companies do and closed underperforming locations long ago. Either that or hire turnaround experts to improve the management of the bad locations. At any rate they had plenty of time to enter chapter 11 bankrupcy. They should have gone this route a long time ago versus just declaring chapter 7 and sending everyone home. The very fact that the vast majority of employees didn't think anything was wrong I think says it all. Either management didn't think they had operational problems (because they never visited their bad locations) or didn't feel saving the company was important enough to even try saving. Probably too busy serfing the internet while they suckered GE to loan them too much money. GE should take over the business.

I quit going to Bennigan's years ago. Their restaurants were "outdated" then, and the food was average at best. Having worked in a small--and successful--restaurant earlier in my life, I know that 95% of all resturant failures are due to bad management.Somebody at Bennigan's was asleep at the switch for too long.

landonmkelsey, why do you keep going back to a place that's terrible and where you've been ignored many times?

Couldn't have happened to a nicer "restaurant". No Bennigans I've ever gone to impressed me. I think the food at Waffle House is better.