Harare has recently seen a rash of new big name franchises open, mostly coming from south of the Limpopo.
KFC, News Cafe, Ocean Basket and Mugg & Bean have all opened fairly recently, and we always like to get feedback from their customers.
Here is one interesting account of an experience at the newest arrival, Mugg & Bean Avondale.
Saka we went to Mugg & Bean for breakfast this morning kuma 9:30. Our waitress came zvakanaka and we ordered two pots of Tanganda tea and our breakfasts.
Half an hour later our food came out and 15 minutes later we were almost halfway through with no sign of tea.
We called the waitress over and asked about or tea only to be told “Sorry, ma tea pot edu apera.”
I was confused and asked her to repeat herself. She says the same thing “with a straight face” and offers to give us tea in mugs. We agree but make it clear that kana zvakadaro we’re not paying for the tea.
She says we need to speak to the manager so we ask her to call the manager over.
The clearly clueless manager comes to our table repeating the story about no teapots. She then goes to explain that this has never happened to them before. We ask why they don’t have contingencies in case every table wants tea at the same times and she stands by her (sweet) apology saying they’ll give us bottomless mugs of tea.
Now I’m irritated and I repeat that we are not going to pay for the tea because it was delivered late with no explanation and then when it was finally offered the explanation was unsatisfactory.
She just stood there and smiled at us repeating that they’d never run out of teapots before.
Inini nenharo dzangu I said I wasn’t paying for the tea because of the shoddy service (i.e. our having to ask about our tea) and because it was unacceptable for an establishment of that nature not to have tea pots.
Achema-chema hake but azobvuma.
We may just pop into the Avondale shop and see for ourselves, as there have been a few more complaints floating about on social media about slow service.
It has proved difficult to find any email contact details for the Zimbabwean franchise holders, and their Facebook page only has a telephone number.
We would love to hear what they have to say for themselves.
Image from: Mugg & Bean Zimbabwe facebook page