Whether you were born here, or are one of the many new residents, you’ve been to McMenamins. Your first visit is almost an initiation ritual for the Rose City. Even with the array of other wonderful dining options, you cannot avoid McDonaldmin’s.
When you first hear they’ve turned an entire elementary school into one large drinking/dining oasis, you can’t help but settle your curiosity with a visit. And if the Beavers play in the National Championship game for baseball, there is no better place than Mission Theater to watch, drink, and celebrate. I like how their alternative dinning experience is almost universal, providing a similar atmosphere with any location. NE 15th and Broadway feels identical to the 82nd location. The White Eagle looks like it could be the lounge for the Mission Theater. Beer and food options are very similar in taste and offer a surprising consistency in presentation. Unfortunately, you also get their terrible service.
It is funny that with so much attention paid to the detail of the properties, the matching wallpaper and twee paintings, the attention to customer service is so abysmal. No matter at what location you dine, the wait staff seems to hate your existence. I’m not sure whether they are underpaid and/or understaffed, but your presence is not welcome. The “Wait here to be seated” sign means wait…and then be greeted with a curt “Sit anywhere.” A 45 minute delay for your food is almost expected. This of course, comes after you’ve waited 20 minutes for the first round of delicious beers. Its ALMOST bearable due to the fact that McMenamins’ brews an amazing selection of micros and cooks up delicious burgers. If you enjoy being ignored and left alone, man (or woman) you have come to the right place.
Eventually, everyone comes to the realization that McMenamins’ service is so bad, it’s not worth going there. Even if the tater-tots are nuggets of greasy gold. Here are tips to boost your McMenamins’ experience from horrific to okay:
- Eat before you go
I recommend Burgerville for a comparable food experience. Time saved= 60 minutes - Order by the pitcher
Unless you are sitting at the bar, plan on a 30 minute wait between beers. Time saved= 30 minutes - Avoid Happy Hour
At no point does McMenamins’ service represent happiness. Time saved= Infinite x 100 hours - Masquerade as a hippy
The wait staff will feel like you are one of them, and not some rich kid from Beaverton or a tourist. Time saved= 45 minutes - Cash only
Do you want to add another 20 minutes for your server to bring the check? Time saved= 20 minutes
The server up above who justifies being rude for being understaffed, im gonna stiff you every time you negger lover
…bag.
To the arrogant hippie and …: I spent years as a waiter and know all about the hard work and undeserved crap from customers. That’s why I always tip at least 20% and am very patient as a customer. But look at the comments and the poll on this site: it is very well established that McMenamins’ service flat out sucks. Its like going to the DEQ for a meal only less polite. Sorry if you happen to work there and are offended… McMenamins’ blows.
As for calling me a douche… yep, you sound just like a McMenamin waiter reading off the specials.
…Douche!
Go play some golf, and drink a Ruby. Douche!!!
Go play golf and drink a Ruby. Bro!
Good Gawd. Saee Drews comments for a the classic McMenamin employee attitude and an explination of how terribly they are managed (bothe businesses and employees). Everything is the customers fault! You have the be the “right customer” to have a good time at McMenamins! Its your “fault” for ordering a milkshake?!?! If you can’t make the damn thing then don’t put it on the menu! And don’t say its a good place to hang out if you aren’t in a rush, because that isn’t true. I might have all the time in the world, but if I go there for a beer, it would be nice if said beer showed up. The arrogant hippie thing works for Escape From New York, but thats because those hippie-nazis aren’t trying to fool you into thinking you will be waited on in the first place.
I do still go to the mission to see a movie every now and then but its rare, and I like the pitch and putt courses at Edgefiled; but notice how both activities invlove almost no staff contact, and you are never in a position to expect actual service.
Its too bad, because I like everything about the places except the service… I now refuse to eat or drink at their restaurants.
Everything is not the customers fault. That is a grossly exaggerated statement. And we have every right to complain about the management because every worker deserves to be treated fairly by their employer…even if they are lowly pub servants. Working in food service is hard-ass work and many of us have bad attitudes because people expect everything to be perfect and treat us like second-class citizens. Its really hard to put on a happy face when day after day people don’t bother to even look you in the face when asking for a drink. (That would require acknowledging you are speaking to a human being!) Im not saying there aren’t servers out there who don’t have an apathetic attitude when it comes to customer service for no good reason, but there are also a lot of customers out there who are just as bad. If you want better service try treating your server like you would want yourself to be treated for once.
I hung out at the Baghdad once and the waitress was stealing. I gave her a 20 for 2 drinks. She put it in her apron and walked away. We were at the tables right next to the register. We finished our drinks still waiting for my change. I caught our redheaded waitress and asked for it back and she said, “OK, I’m not trying to steal your money!” very loudly in front of a full bar. I initially thought she just spaced on bringing the change but after she got defensive like that I knew what was really going on. She set down my change and receipt with a huff and I saw on the receipt that it had just been rung up. Yeeeaahh. Guess McMenamins really does pay shitty, seeing as their servers feel the need to skim. I wanted to discuss this with the manager by my boyfriend wouldn’t let me because she gets her car fixed at his shop. Honey, if you’re going to do that, don’t be so obvious. People may be drinking but that doesn’t mean they’re oblivious to you. This was a while ago, I wonder if a Secret Shopper popped her as I walk by there all the time and haven’t seen her.
Oh, and one more thing…When I got hired as a cook at the Bagdad Theater in 2000 I made nine dollars an hour, and guess what? They still pay their cooks the same amount nearly a decade later. So try living off those wages and tell me what “customer service” means to you. Not only that, but I would often have to work on a busy Saturday night with only two other employees making literally hundreds of pizzas with tickets piling up on the floor. If you really want to complain then call Mike or Brian McMenamin and tell them to get a f***ing clue.
P.S.
Don’t worry, I don’t work there anymore, I got fired for being ten minutes late because my car window wouldn’t roll up…nice people, you should try working for them!
As a former Mcmenamins employee I can tell you that yes, we are underpaid and understaffed. They treat their employees like shit and hire hippies on purpose because they are thinking they will be so stoned they won’t notice they are making shit wages and getting no benefits. A common practice is to cut employees early from their scheduled shift so that they: A. don’t qualify for a paid meal, and B. don’t qualify for the required hours to get health benefits. Oh, and they try to get you hooked on their shitty beer, which is probably why you get such terrible service as well since everyone working is hung-over on their hippy-crack beer. I don’t care how many hotels/schools/insane asylums they rescue from demolition, they don’t deserve anyone’s business.
Thank you for validating my feelings, everyone. I feel loved here.
This is great I was going to send them a nasty gram but I like this better.
We just had a pleasurable experience at the McMenanins in Millcreek Wa. Yes there’s one clear up here and it’s no better. The pleasure was walking out the door just after it took the waiter 15 minutes to come to the table for the first greeting after we sat down.(insert small restaurant & minimal customers). I guess it was more important to service the customers that already had their meals with their 30 minute beer than greet the new customers that just sat down. Right as he finally got to our table we got up and left. Surprised look on his face, DOH! Get a clue here. What gives with this? They have great food and beers but it takes forever to get either one. Lucky for us we have a Blazing Onion just down the street that has their act together, great food, great beers, the difference is they’ve included great service. This is the last time I’ll every walk into any McMenamin’s, it’s just not worth the frustration received from eating there.
I had the same exact situation in Oregon City and Beaverton McMenanins. I will never go into a McMenanins again. They need a over hauling of new management before they all go out of business.
pablo, you are the man. people don’t realise what we go through as employees for mcmenamins. yes, it’s true that some people that are hired are just assholes. Most of the managers that are hired aren’t qualified to be running their own lives let alone a busy restaurant. the training program for the restaurant is “here, this is how you pour ranch and these are the things you need to tell your table that we have. now go and serve those 15 tables over there within 3 minutes.” there’s no support, no backup, and if you dont do your job you get a writeup that means shit. the cost goals are ridiculously unrealistic and force us to be efficient instead of courteous. it only takes one asshole customer to push us over the edge. it’s real stupid, but it’s how it is. if you dont like the service from mcmenamins, there are sooooooooo many other, better places to go in portland. so stop bringing your 18 kids and expecting us to have ur order done in 5 minutes. we’re not mcdonalds. if we have a full restaurant, dont order a freakin milkshake. they take forever to make and you’re probably not the only person that wants one. also, dont sit at a dirty table. 90% of the time, you look just like the people that were sitting there before and we think you’ve cashed out and are just camping. i’ve had too many people get mad at me for not getting to their table right away when it was their fault for sitting at the dirty table. in reality, i could probably sit here forever and just rant about how bad it is, but it can be good. if you like to go somewhere and just hangout for a while, enjoy a few brews and some food with friends and dont have anywhere to be, come to mcmenamins. if you’re on a strict schedule and u have to be in and out with food right away, chances are there’s a fast food place just around the corner. if you want a slightly better experience, try getting off ur cell phone or actually listening to your server and communicating with them when they come to your table. try ordering a pitcher instead of just a pint and you’ll have beer for a while instead of sitting with an empty glass. try showing us some respect for working our asses off for you.
Holy shit, thanks Pablo.
I almost hate to admit this, Internet, but I am a cook/server for the Brothers. I don’t even work at one of the major properties, just a piss-ant little pub in the boonies, but the place stays hopping ALL THE DAMN TIME. We work in kitchens so cramped and small the fucking roaches are hunchbacked. The servers seem curt and snippy because there are at most TWO of them and HUNDREDS of you. The comment about the annual Christmas booze? Yeah, that didn’t happen this year. Why not? Because the brothers just spent six million dollars on a square block of downtown Portland so they can put up a new hotel, and dupe even more of you into spending five bucks on a pint of beer that it costs twelve cents to produce. Sure, we could all put on happy faces and make believe we have wonderful jobs far far away from any screaming toddlers grinding crayons into the carpet, but maybe you guys could cut us all a little slack and not berate us because we didn’t bring you the ranch you didn’t ask for in the first place. If you really hate McMenamins so much, STOP COMING BACK. They are just fucking Ore-Ida tater tots, people. You can buy some at Fred Meyer and make them at home. It’s not that hard.
The brothers are the ones to blame. It’s all about the money for their machine. They sound like fricken Walmart.
When I lived in Bend, I ate at the Old St. Francis School on many occasions. Not only was the service the worst of any restaurant in town, but the background music was always so loud that you couldn’t hear the person next to you. Whenever one of us would ask a waiter to turn it down, they would just get angry and walk away.
My husband and I absolutely agree! I really enjoy the atmosphere but ALWAYS get thee worst service that we swear we will never go back. And having been an employee at a mcmenamins myself I can say that I have never given worse service than when I worked there. They absolutely set you (the server) to fail: completely under staffing the place so there is no way to give any kind of decent service to the amount of patrons. This way the brothers can MAKE MORE MONEY!!! I have never received worse tips than working at mcmenamins and I deserved them, I gave crappy service!
The beer is okay, but why can’t they make decent french fries? Soggy, greasy, and gross. I do feel for their over-worked/under-paid staff, though.
I worked for the company for 3 years, and I have to say my overall experience as an employee was dismal at best. They are always understaffed if not on the floor the kitchen is screwed. I was a cook at the kennedy school and it would be so busy for us that we would laugh. Some thurs. fri. and sat. nights we would have 20 tickets working and a 15 foot string of tickets coming off the printer curling up on the floor that we had’nt even looked at. Its a joke, a very sad joke. Again as cooks, and I worked with some very fast cooks as well as bad ones, there was just no way it was going to happen with the amount of equipment and hands on deck. And yet the whole time they make HUGE money constantly. Most weekend nights would show huge sales… huge!!! and yet they would understaff us so badly. It was stupid, each cook busting out 1000 dollars/hour in food for 6-8 hours straight and they would’nt cough up an extra fryer or dishwasher… anything. Over the years it got worse, they started firing really great long timers, people I knew that had been with the company for years, had retirement going the whole 9 yards and poof later. Managers would get huge bonuses at the end of a year for cutting cost/labor and us peeps would get a bottle of booze each year to sooth our pain. At first it seemed like a cool place then… whoa no thanks.
I agree with all of you. As an ex Mcmenamin employee I know why it is the way it is. They do pay a lot of attention to the detail of the properties, but NOTHING else. Mike McMenamin is an eccentric fool who cares only about atmosphere and nothing else. They actually use the old golden gate tap system from 50 years ago. NOBODY uses that garbage anymore as it has become obsolete. They refuse to invest in anything but new properties, and it is killing them and driving away customers such as yourselves. They need a wake up call.
Yeah, I’m gonna have to agree with the person above me. They are rediculously understaffed and underpaid. They could get another job, and YOU people could also…I dunno, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! you are in fact human beings, and posses free will. You don’t like McMenamins? Don’t Freeking go there you morons!
Mcmenamins is so completely understaffed as to be ridiculous. Don’t you people ever notice that you never see a busser or a host? That’s not all, we run our own food, pour our own drinks, wash our own dishes and basically bust our ass so you can get drunk. Do you ever wonder why they are being rude? Is it because Mcmenamins exclusively hires unfriendly people, is it because they are the one restaurant thats wants to lose money? NO it’s because we don’t have any time to get your ranch and your water if you don’t order it up front. Do not stiff us. Go get a sixer and some carl’s junior if you can’t afford to go out to eat
I thought I would try it. I tried it four times, one out of the four they got my order correct. Zero out of the four were hot (I am talking omelet, burger, pizza, and another burger), zero times was the staff friendly and courteous.
Oh, and don’t forget the “Ummm…you waited an hour for me to serve you, I fucked up your order, and gave you a go-to-hell look when you brought it up, and the tip you left was completely insufficient” sigh. How dare you not leave a 100 percent tip for that Captain Neon Burger that arrived 45 minutes after it was made? Do you think that bad weed grows on trees or something?
I get great service, but that’s because I only go to one McMennies, and that one is my local ‘Cheers’. They know my name, where I work, what’s on my laptop, whom I last slept with, my crapassness with crosswords, and that I enjoy rides around an empty bar on a dolly on my birthday.
(Re my birthday- my a-hole footwear designing ex-employers wouldn’t let me take my birthday off and made me work a long day ass day to boot, it was a pleasure to stop in for dinner and drinks at 11:30pm to my ‘Cheers’.)
Shrug. However, not all places are like that I agree.
I have been away from PDX for about 12 years. One of the first things I did when I got back was head out to have McM’s cheeseburger. Oh how I missed those. It is like comfort food.
I don’t drink beer anymore, but I still get a hankering for the burgers – even though I am mostly vegetarian.
Anyway, I stopped at one of the original McM’s on Friday – NW 23rd and Savier. I’ve been going down there for a few months – as it is closest to my home in Columbia County. I’ve never had a problem with service, but Friday was the exception. My usual server was nowhere around and the new girl treated me like crap.
I gave her a nice $0.05 tip.
PS: Still loved the burger!
Yeah, McM’s are well-known for their lousy service but their porters and stouts certainly make a periodic visit worth my while. I can down those Terminators like there’s no tomorrow. And whenever they’ve got their darkest brews on nitro? Fuhgedaboutit. They can pretty much do whatever they want with me; I am toast.
The Bagdad and Barley Mill (both along Hawthorne) are my favorites among their many establishments, even though I haven’t always been fond of the service (or lack thereof). But, it is what it is. Thanks for posting this. Cheers!
McMenamins not only has bad service but compared to the quality brews all over Portland (and Oregon as a whole) there is no reason any sane person would term their brand of weak swill “an amazing selection.” Only someone whose pallet was cultivated on the basest of liquids (Pabst, Budweiser, the Putrescent bile vomited out of the great satan) could possibly be pleased with their beer.
As an anecdote to backup my point I offer the following;
At 3 seperate locations a number of the gratuitously hip serving staff favored me with a funny story about the McMenamins brothers themselves. Apparently when they come to visit a location, for whatever reason, they insist that a tap of Bud Light be added so that they don’t have to drink their own beer.
With this in mind, anecdotal though it may be, how can one bring themselves to drink their swill? Do you buy lunch from a skinny chef?
Haha! I love what you have to say here, its so true everything about every John Barley Corn/Edgefield/all the million McM’s around here sucks (althought I really do love the tots…) So is it weird that every single time we go to one we end up having the best time ever?! As lame as they are we always seem to come away with at least one good story which really I guess goes back to the point of your whole blog anyway and that is that as many things about Portland that suck they somehow make our lives so freakin entertaining!!
Not only is #13 my favorite number, but this is indeed the thing I hate MOST about Portland! You really hit the nail on the head here. Kudos to you. And the tots really aren’t that great!