Why it’s time to ditch the big restaurant chains

After a disingenuous encounter at Carluccio’s, Caroline Bullock wonders when the customer experience became the least important thing

(PA)

Quibbling over the payment of £1.20 is never edifying particularly under the gaze of a small queue in a branch of Carluccio’s with few other distractions on a quiet Sunday afternoon

It’s the principle though, isn’t it? No one likes to be shafted. The offer chalked outside advertised a coffee and pastry deal for £3.75. It drew me in. Shown to a table of cakes to choose from I picked a carrot sponge and along with an americano got a bill for £4. 95. The discrepancy, explained someone on the till gesturing towards a lone, dry croissant, was because I had chosen a cake rather than the pastry option. Inadvertently, I found myself on a different, marginally pricier deal altogether, one that at no point I’d been made aware of, along with any price difference between the cake options.

Does it all really matter? Perhaps not, but it felt disingenuous and a bit shoddy, and a reminder of the casual dining sector’s form for finding ways to subtlety inflate seemingly decent offers. Compounded by slow service, which saw the cake abandoned on the counter as the waiter caught up with a colleague, the complacency seemed misplaced. The restaurant, one of 30 branches to be spared closure as part of a CVA rescue plan in May 2020, was half empty, and is in a sector needing to reconnect with its fading customer base – fast.