jlawrence01 wrote:I had that problem at a place called Boffo's near Lake Forest. Someone recommended it to me. I spent 20 minutes to get there as I got lost. Showed up at 9:30 pm and was denied service as their ovens and fryers were off. The posted time was 10 pm.

I wil not return.

FWIW - if you change your mind, the food there isn't bad. It's in Highwood.
Buffo's - www.buffos.com
431 Sheridan Rd
Highwood, IL 60040-1308
(847) 432-0301

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but this is exactly what I was asking about when I started this thread. You list 10 p.m. as your "closing" time. But that time is really irrelevant to your customers. It isn't the last time they can expect to be seated and served. It isn't the time by which they'd better be out of the building because you're locking up for the night. It isn't a meaningful time at all.

So why list 10 p.m.? Why not say, "Last call, 9:45 p.m."?

Anything else from the kitchen I take orders until 10 p.m. because they can all get made in less then ten minutes. Pizzas I stop orders at 9:45, guess I should of clarified that. Essentially you can get sat and order up until 10 p.m. If we don't have any people in the place, 10 p.m. is when we lock the doors and start to get ready to go home.

I'm not going to say we don't make exceptions. On days before holidays we end up staying open until people stop coming in. On certain days the chairs might be up at 9:45 and you might be asked to eat at the bar if you're the late person. Mainly we try to accomodate as much as we can if possible, it is a service business.

Best advice as said before - CALL AHEAD. Tell me exactly how far away you are, how many people are with you and we'll be ready for you.

pizano345 wrote:
Best advice as said before - CALL AHEAD. Tell me exactly how far away you are, how many people are with you and we'll be ready for you.

whats the name of your restaurant?

pizano345 wrote:

Best advice as said before - CALL AHEAD. Tell me exactly how far away you are, how many people are with you and we'll be ready for you.


whats the name of your restaurant?

I'm the GM of Pizano's Pizza, Glenview location.

pizano345 wrote:

pizano345 wrote:

Best advice as said before - CALL AHEAD. Tell me exactly how far away you are, how many people are with you and we'll be ready for you.


whats the name of your restaurant?

I'm the GM of Pizano's Pizza, Glenview location.

thanks, thats what I was guessing, but didnt want to assume.

pizano345 wrote:Anything else from the kitchen I take orders until 10 p.m. because they can all get made in less then ten minutes. Pizzas I stop orders at 9:45, guess I should of clarified that. Essentially you can get sat and order up until 10 p.m.

Ah, OK. That's perfectly reasonable. I never mind being told, when I come into a restaurant towards closing time, that some menu items are done for the night.

Mike G wrote:thank god we have an active thread again about how awful restaurant owners are

it was a rough 72 hours

Mike, yours is a recurring complaint (and I will defend to the death your right to kvetch recurringly), but is there a shortage of writing on LTH about food itself? It seems to me there's quite a lot of it, in every subforum on the site. There has to be room (in my humble, non-moderator opinion) for queries such as LAZ's as well.

I think she raises a good question, one I've thought about from time to time (if with less emotion). And I've found a number of the answers here useful. I agree especially with the call ahead (or ask ahead in person) policy. One recent Sunday in Andersonville we wanted to go to M. Henry for brunch, but the closing time was 3:00 and it was now 2:30 (and my wife was still shopping). I asked the host what was the last reasonable time for us to show up, and he gave me a helpful answer. (Which resulted in us having brunch there, and everything being fine.) I wouldn't have blithely assumed that everything would work out without getting confirmation on it.

LAZ wrote:

ucjames wrote:And in my experience in retail (2 summers in the Museum Shop at the Art Institute back in college) we closed the doors 75% of the way 15 minutes before the posted closing time and only allowed people out from that point on - nobody was allowed in. PA announcements began at the same time advising customers that we were closing, and 5 minutes after that staff were to actively encourage people still in the store to please make their final purchases. There was no staying after closing, anybody still in the store at closing time was booted if they would not make an immediate purchase.

Shows the difference between an independent retailer (my experience) and an institution where no one individual has a vested interest in long-term profits (yours).

pizano345 wrote:I close our restaurant three nights a week. Our posted hours say we close at 10. I take pizza orders up until 9:45. Pizzas take 30 minutes to cook, obviously I let people stay past our 10 P.M. "closing" time.

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but this is exactly what I was asking about when I started this thread. You list 10 p.m. as your "closing" time. But that time is really irrelevant to your customers. It isn't the last time they can expect to be seated and served. It isn't the time by which they'd better be out of the building because you're locking up for the night. It isn't a meaningful time at all.

So why list 10 p.m.? Why not say, "Last call, 9:45 p.m."?

That's the frustrating thing for consumers. Because we never know when 10 p.m. really means 9:45, or 9:30, or in rare cases, 10 p.m. (Or whether it means nothing at all and the management just closes up whenever they feel like it.)

Some people deal with this like ucjames, and just assume that 10 p.m. really means 9 or 9:15. But if everybody did that, you'd soon be left with an empty restaurant for your last half hour, and then you'd probably change your "closing" to 9:30. But then ucjames and his ilk would stop coming by 8:30....

My ilk? Really?

Anyway, unless you expect me - and my ilk - to finish eating in 15-30 minutes, arriving at 9:00-9:15 isn't going to leave the restaurant empty until 10pm or later for a simple meal. Which would, shockingly enough, be at or past their closing time.

As far as the increasingly irrelevant retail discussion, do you not consider job security to provide a vested interest?

I think the answer to how to handle this "problem" has been given... phone first.

Like I said upthread saying restaurants "lie about their hours" because one may have closed early due to lack of business on a particular night is silly.

jimswside wrote:I think the answer to how to handle this "problem" has been given... phone first.

Like I said upthread saying restaurants "lie about their hours" because one may have closed early due to lack of business on a particular night is silly.

If it had only happened once at one restaurant it wouldn't be an issue. It happens, however, all the time.

I know from other discussions on this board that I'm in the minority as late-evening diner. Those of you who nearly always eat at prime time probably don't encounter this phenomenon.

Phoning first is not always a viable solution. I make a lot of calls to restaurants; in a surprising number of cases, the person answering the phone has no idea what the restaurant's official hours are, let alone the time they intend to close on any particular night.

Even phoning just before leaving may not help. I have been told on many occasions, "Well, if we're still busy by the time you get here, we'll seat you, but if it gets slow, we'll probably close." I have also been told, "Oh, the kitchen's open till X," and then arrived before that time to find they were no longer seating.

LAZ wrote:Even phoning just before leaving may not help. I have been told on many occasions, "Well, if we're still busy by the time you get here, we'll seat you, but if it gets slow, we'll probably close." I have also been told, "Oh, the kitchen's open till X," and then arrived before that time to find they were no longer seating.

To me, that first answer actually would be helpful, because the ambiguity of the answer would lead me to a completely non-ambiguous decision: not to go. A "probably" either way is as good as a "no."

But being given a definitive yes which turns out not to be true would be aggravating.

LAZ wrote:

jimswside wrote:Phoning first is not always a viable solution. I make a lot of calls to restaurants; in a surprising number of cases, the person answering the phone has no idea what the restaurant's official hours are, let alone the time they intend to close on any particular night.

Even phoning just before leaving may not help. I have been told on many occasions, "Well, if we're still busy by the time you get here, we'll seat you, but if it gets slow, we'll probably close." I have also been told, "Oh, the kitchen's open till X," and then arrived before that time to find they were no longer seating.

Any more, an inch of snow is grounds for an early closure. Unfortunately, you don't find that out until you drive the three miles to the restaurant and tehn schlep through the snow.

Any more, it is a lot easier to head home and attack the pantry.

riddlemay wrote:To me, that first answer actually would be helpful, because the ambiguity of the answer would lead me to a completely non-ambiguous decision

I do believe we are nearing the end of this thread.

Well, before the chairs are stacked up and they start vacuuming this thread, perhaps this scene about a seemingly-closed restaurant from Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie would be an appropriate palate cleanser. Click to about the 5-minute mark to begin the scene...

Thanks, Mike. Funny clip! I've never seen that movie. Now I think I need to.