Sunday, May 12, 2013

Restaurant Impossible - Mom & Dad's Update

Mom & Dad's Restaurant Impossible
Tonight on Restaurant Impossible, Robert Irvine and crew are going to DeFuniak Springs, Florida to help out Mom & Dad's Italian Restaurant.  The owner Carolyn refuses to make any changes six years after her husband's death despite the  'ill-prepared food and mounting debt.'  As I normally do with Restaurant: Impossible episodes, I searched around the Internet to read stories, comments and reviews about Mom and Dad's Italian Restaurant to get an idea of how the restaurant is doing since Robert Irvine visited, and here is what I found:


The reviews both before and after Robert Irvine visited were very good for Mom and Dad's Restaurant.

A local article announcing the Restaurant Impossible makeover had a lot of comments wondering why it needed an update, such as:
  • "My husband and I have been going there for 50 years and the food nor the service needs improving! It is wonderful!"
  • "Sounds exciting, but I have a difficult time believing that Mom and Dad's was struggling to stay open. Every time I go there, I have to wait an hour for a table."
  • "I am glad for it, those people at Mom and Dads work hard and they deserve the help. Although I agree with most of you, that the food there is amazing, and yes there is usually a wait, but the service is great as well."
  • "The Restaurant is already awesome: menu is great and service is great."

Conclusion:
It seems like most of the people love Mom and Dad's already, including the food and service, and have been going there for years.  Considering this, and that people have said there was always a wait to eat there, makes me think this makeover will be more about the decor and Restaurant Impossible highlighting the death of Carolyn's husband and how it has impacted the business.  Maybe it will focus on the pricing of items and food costs, which could be the problem.

The restaurant does keep an up-to-date Facebook Page, and has almost 1,600 'likes,' which is a ton compared to other Restaurant Impossible restaurants in the past.  There are also a lot of positive comments on their page as well as local support for the restaurant.  Sounds like this restaurant should have no problem succeeding going forward.


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5 comments:

  1. The show was well done. Thank you for helping one of our local restaurants!

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  2. Nice review except waiting doesn't mean a business isn't struggling! The owner did state no one knows the trouble she's in. I've known of business's that have had huge lines with long waits & went bankrupt. A little common sense might help :'(
    The point was at how the owner was mismanaging her costs hurting the bottom line profits etc & wasn't able to pay her taxes.
    Enjoyed the show and I'd love to visit that lasagna looked DELICIO!!!

    BTW: Apparently, those that made the comments failed to pay attention, don't know much about running a business, and no clue of how the to run a restaurant!

    You must be the people that are horribly rude, have no respect for the people that make your food, and couldn't cook microwavable popcorn! Gossip that!

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  3. Well, it was good to finally see a show where he could give them a nudge and help her with some of the areas that she was struggling in and not the tirades that he usually goes into. He also didn't act like he was going to puke after he ate their food. It was refreshing.

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  4. She said she refused to have a computer but they clearly have a POS. The tickets were machine-printed, not hand-written.

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  5. I would like to comment about the statement that every time they went there, there was an hour wait. A few years ago a new Italian restaurant opened that was on my way to and from work and I occasionally worked evenings so I had a pretty good idea of their customers and busy times. Everyone was so surprised when they closed and said the exact same thing, it was always busy when I was there. I would then ask if they were always there on Friday or Saturday between 6 and 8 and the response was always yes. Well, I drove by there during every afternoon and some evenings and I would always reply there was never anyone there on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evenings and maybe one or two cars there for lunch during the week. You can't pay the rent and overhead with business just for a few hours per week that they were busy even though they were opened many, many hours each week. They still had to pay rent, staff, taxes, utilities and everything else even though there were no customers. Also, if they was a snowstorm or other bad weather they did not have any business on the weekends either.

    Now I have my own retail business and people think the same think. People shop at the same time, it is either feast or famine. When I have a sale, we are busy the first two hours and then nothing for the rest of the day. We are busy in the fall so everyone thinks we are busy year round, but from Mid May until the end of August there is virtually no business, we have to budget our expenses to cover for the full year. And believe me, our expenses do not go down on bit in the summer.

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