Ocean City Brewing Company

Reviews 3

MA

Matthew L

Let me start my review with what I had for dinner the night I went to OCBC for dinner; a #2 McDonalds value meal. It was hot, served with a smile and satisfied my hungry pains that were caused by a near 4 hour wait for my food at OCBC; food that never came mind you. My group had dinner (well attempted to) at OCBC on Friday Dec 4,2015. We got there at 4:30ish we were sat right away. Waitress came out right away took our drink order and explained it was opening night so please be patient. We were cool with that since the exact same group of us were at Bostons on their opening night and we had experienced a few hiccups but any problems were graciously addressed. Drinks came about 20 minutes later; no biggie opening night we got it. Placed our food order; then the waiting began. Every hour or so we see our waitress and she assured us it was only a few minutes more. Mind you our party had 4 children in under the age of 8, they were getting hungry and so were us! After about a 2 hour wait I proceeded to find a manager or gasp my waitresses neither were to be found. When I approached one of the hostess her greeting to me was "What is your problem?" This, this is when my patience went out the window. I can understand it is opening night and poop happens but to get rude to a guest in your restaurant that you are trying to create a good first impression too is in my book inexcusable. After about another hour of the food is almost coming out game my party and I threw our hands up. I literally needed to go in the kitchen to find a manager in order to square up my bill. The entire management staff was hiding in the kitchen. I have been to and been apart of many opening nights in restaurants (worked them) this was by far the worst opening I have ever seen in my life; a life that has a BS in Hospitality Management from Johnson and Wales and a 11 year career with Marriott. Here are some tips for the future if you ever open a restaurant again. Have multiply soft openings maybe one or two that are invite only then an unannounced public opening the night before. Create reasonable sections for your waitstaff no more then maybe 3 tables on the grand opening night. You would rather a line at the hostess stand then filled tables without service. If you start thinking it is out of hand and the kitchen is weeded then you tell your hostess stand tell parties it is a 2- 3 hour wait. That gives folks the option to gut it out if they choose or go find a new restaurant for the night and come back to you on a quieter night to hopefully have a good experience. You know your kitchen is going to get hammered; you should have made huge patches of those waffle chips just to place on tables as people waited it out. Make 2nd chance business cards that you could have given out when hiccups happen that say "I am sorry please give us a 2nd chance; 50% off your next visit." Leave your dinning room manager in the dinning room; you need one person just to handle the complaints and help keep that first impression a good one. In the hotel business we call this person a lobby lizard; they hang out in the lobby and just address everyone. They have no other obligations other then customer service. Train your staff to deal with conflict; Bostons knocked it out of the park and they had the same if not more people when I visited them on opening night. A restaurant visit or hotel stay is an experience for your guest; sounds like your opening weekend was unfortunately littered with bad experiences. I personally will never return and it is not because I never got my meal it is because of the experience I had with that one hostess; the "what is my problem" hostess. She personify OCBC, its opening night, its lack of management and its training in one comment. I wish you all the luck OCBC this is not a tourist town and bad first impressions can destroy a restaurant here. Just ask your friend Joe; you know the guy with the Crab Shack.

GR

Griffin Lauter

I went to ocbc this evening around 8pm. Not a single person inside 3 tables already in the middle of eating. Our server was ok at first and only had us as a table but began disappearing for 15-20 minutes in end. She would come back and say Im gonna go check and see where your food is.. great but when she walks to the bar and sits down to bs with the bartender thats not checking on my food. About 30 minutes passed since we ordered. I got a strip steak for 19.99. Was not a strip at all but a measly 6oz, greasy, unseasoned cheap cut of meat. On top of being 19.99 I got a 1/4 cup of mash potatoes and a salad. My girlfriend got 1 crab cake and rice. 17.99.... seriosuly... when I finally was able to ask a different server for our check she went and handed it to ours since she was so busy at the bar talking. After 15 minutes went by she finally brings it back over and says "oh man Im sorry that took so long." Well maybe just maybe if you werent sitting on your phone at the bar and actually doing the job you were hired to do not only A-you would have more then 3 tables in a gigantic restaurant filled and B-maybe have some returning customers me not being one of them for sure. I was extremely happy to see that 99% of the reviews above me said the exact same thing. Stay clear of this place. Waste of time and money. Oh and let me put the icing on the cake for ya. Ive been home for 45 minutes unable to leave the bathroom. Sorry for the details but I dont wnat anyone else to have to deal with this. Never again!!

CA

Catherine Nehrebecki

I visited this place tonight for the first time and my review for the food and service are in two parts. First the food.I ordered one of their brewed beers and it was very good (strawberry seasonal one). I also had the fried pickles which were ok but not great, they didnt have enough coating on them so the pickles themselves were kind of tough. I also had the crab dip with pretzels which was excellent. Now for the service review. When I first got there I had to wait 5 min before anyone even greeted me, even though it wasnt terribly busy. In the time I was waiting, a line formed behind me of quite a few people . I was finally seated and was waiting for my friends to arrive but the service proved to be slow the entire night. We often waited 10+ min between seeing our server. The food and drinks took a long time to come out. Looking around the restaurant it was not terribly busy but there werent a lot of employees around so it seemed they were understaffed. I worked in restaurants for several years and am slow to judge when I go out for that reason. There were no explanations provided to us for why things were taking so long or apologies made for the time we waited. Thankfully, we were all catching up and had a lot to talk about so we werent in a rush, otherwise I deffinetly would have walked out. I was thinking it would be a good place to come with my kids since they have a playground but the service was so slow , my children never would have made it without a meltdown.