09/25/2026
Last night was a hard night for us.
We crashed during dinner service.
It doesn’t happen very often these days, but when it does, it stings. We’re proud of what we do here, and having to look a customer in the eye and apologize because their food took far too long, or because we simply didn’t deliver the experience they came here for, hurts us deeply.
Last night, things started to unravel in our kitchen. We had one of those nights where the restaurant seemed to fill up all at once, rather than the more gradual flow we normally see. That put a lot of pressure on the kitchen very quickly. A few mistakes happened, frustration started to creep in, and one thing led to another. Bill times started stacking up, and for a period of time, we lost ourselves.
I sometimes compare a busy restaurant to a pit crew. When everyone is communicating and working together, the tires and everything else can be changed in 6.8 seconds and the car is back on the track (with a nice clean windshield) Last night, our pit crew got rattled. One slow tire change turned into another, the pressure built, and suddenly something we normally do very well was taking much longer than it should.
Unfortunately, some of our customers experienced that with us, and we weren’t able to rescue every table. To those people, we are genuinely sorry.
September and October traditionally begin to slow down, and we schedule our staff and prepare based on what we reasonably expect. Sometimes the doors open and Medicine Hat has other plans for us. That’s a great problem to have, but it isn’t an excuse for providing a poor experience.
Last night, we weren’t good enough for a period of time.There’s no point pretending otherwise, blaming someone else, or hiding from it. We own it.
We’re meeting today to talk about what happened, where things started to break down, and what we can do differently so that when the pressure builds again, our pit crew stays together and keeps moving.
To everyone who came through our doors last evening and had a great experience, thank you. And to anyone who waited far too long, became frustrated, or left disappointed, we are very sorry.
We’ll learn from it. We’ll be better because of it. And we’ll keep moving forward.
