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A mortified server accidentally gave customer a $5750 bottle of wine. Her manager had her back.

A perfect response to a $5717 mistake.

Canva Photos, Hawksmoor Manchester

An unwitting server accidentally gave away a nearly $6000 bottle of wine

Ever screw up royally at work? There’s nothing worse than that sinking feeling that comes when you realize you have to fess up to your manager. Next comes the uncertainty over whether you’ll keep your job or not. If your mistake happens to be one that costs your company money, let alone a significant amount of it, the stress is unimaginable.

A server at the Hawksmoor Manchester steakhouse and cocktail bar in England went through that same experience. She accidentally served a customer a £4500 ($5750) bottle of Chateau le Pin Pomerol 2001 instead of the £260 ($33) Bordeaux they ordered.


wine, red wine, wine glass, vintage wine, fine wine, fine dining, funny restaurant storiesYou have to wonder if normal people can even tell if they're drinking a $6,000 bottle of wine Photo by Jeff Siepman on Unsplash

The server didn't realize the mistake right away. It wasn't until later that a manager clocked the switch, leaving the poor waiter absolutely mortified. It's not every day that a server makes a $5700 mistake! The few that do rarely end up keeping their jobs.

However, the server’s manager decided to handle the situation with grace and humor, posting a lighthearted message on Twitter.

"To the customer who accidentally got given a bottle of Chateau le Pin Pomerol 2001, which is £4500 on our menu, last night - hope you enjoyed your evening! To the member of staff who accidentally gave it away, chin up! One-off mistakes happen and we love you anyway," they wrote.


The manager even went a step further and excused the mistake by saying the bottles “look pretty similar.”

The post went mega viral, racking up over 53,000 Likes on Twitter/X. Commenters praised management and ownership for letting the server off the hook for an honest mistake.

"As someone who works in hospitality, bless you for being understanding and not flying off the handle at the poor lad/lass."

"Now that’s a good employer! Mistakes do happen, sadly some employees aren’t as forgiving and only see the value of what was lost. I’m certain your understanding and forgiving manner towards the member of your staff will win you more customers!"

"This is such a great way to deal with a member of staff who has made a genuine mistake - great to read about it, well done to the management team & a lot of leaders could learn a thing or two from this story. Thanks for sharing the story."

Working in any kind of customer service, especially food service, is brutally difficult and under-appreciated. These kinds of employees absolutely deserve some grace, so it's heartwarming to see them finally get some.

Other users teased that if this was the kind of service they could expect from the restaurant, they'd be making a reservation ASAP.

"How can I book a table?" someone joked.


Hawksmoor founder Will Beckett later clarified the story to BBC News saying that the server had been working with a manager from another location because it was a busy night. The manager accidentally grabbed the wrong bottle and the customer apparently didn’t notice the mistake. (Sure they didn't.)

Beckett said the server is “brilliant,” but he’s still going to “tease her for this when she stops being so mortified.”


wine, white wine, red wine, fine dining, sommelier, expensive wineAll wine is good wine. Cheers!Giphy

Some users questioned the very nature of a nearly $6000 bottle of wine. To be fair, reviews of the vintage call it "perfection," "luxury," and a "thrilling experience." Still, it can be hard for people to wrap their minds around such extravagance.

"Is no-one else disgusted by the fact that a restaurant charges £4,500 for a bottle of wine in the first place? No wine is worth that much; it's pure & excessive extravagance for the sake of it & I find it vile," a user commented.

Beckett followed up in another post adding that, while the wine was expensive, the restaurant has raised over £1 million ($1.3 million) for the Wood Street Mission children's charity.

This article originally appeared six years ago.

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Bored guy spent his free time building a restaurant for the squirrels in his yard

It has a menu and everything!

James Vreeland/Instagram

Two for dinner?

One man from the Detroit area put his quarantine creativity to great use. James Vreeland used his newfound free time to, as he put it on Instagram, "get into the restaurant game."

He did that, of course, by building an entire tiny restaurant in his yard specifically for squirrels. It's hilarious and also weirdly very impressive.


It's an open-air concept with communal picnic-style tables and natural grass floors, which really brings a sense of connection to the earth and the source of the squirrel food. It's a brilliant design.

It's called Maison de Noix, or "The Nut House" in English, and it's the newest, hottest neighborhood spot that all the squirrels are chattering about. If they didn't have to social distance, there would be lines out on the sidewalk every day to get a table. It's very exclusive.

communal, neighborhood, creativity

A picnic style lay out for the squirrel restaurant.

James Vreeland/Instagram

It has a tiny coat rack with wire hangers for squirrel jackets and everything! And even though the restaurant is aimed at its squirrel patrons, it's open to all sorts of creatures. James said that the blue jays in the area are also loving the new place.

Not only did James build an innovative restaurant, but his menu is like nothing I've ever seen. It's so diverse, and yet, so streamlined. And don't worry; he's printed out the menu and stationed it at the front of the restaurant for those who might be interested.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

menus, nuts, comedy, nut house

What’s on the menu?

James Vreeland/Instagram

So simple, yet so sophisticated, you know? A mixed seed trio! How intriguing. And you can't go wrong with stale bread or pizza crust. I appreciate that the chef leads with what he has on hand and fresh (I mean, stale) that day, instead of shoehorning out-of-season ingredients into a year-round menu.

Raw peanuts on the shell are a known squirrel favorite, and counter-softened apples, well, that's an application you don't see very often, mainly because they're so hard to get just right. But I have faith in the kitchen staff of Maison de Noix.

peanuts, Facebook Live, shaky cam, streaming

Business is nutty.

James Vreeland/Instagram

For a brand new restaurant that opened during a global pandemic, Maison de Noix is doing very well. It helps when you are the only restaurant that caters to squirrels in the whole United States. They really cornered the market.

He has even started doing Facebook Live videos that are just a live stream of the restaurant. You can tune in each day to see the animals stop by. At one point during the last live stream, James commented, "Sorry for the shaky cam — there is a bluejay sitting on the camera."

A time-lapse of the "brunch rush" can be found on his Instagram, and it's just delightful. This whole venture is just entirely lovely, and I thank James for his efforts. I hope things like squirrel restaurants don't go away once the pandemic ends. We need them now, and we'll need them then.


This article originally appeared on 4.5.20

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Celebrity chef shares the one big red flag that shows a restaurant is bad news

It says a lot about the establishment.

via Jim Greenhill/Wikimedia Commons

Chef Robert Irvine addresses the 2016 USO Gala, Washington, D.C., Oct. 20, 2016.

A restaurant can have a charming exterior and a cozy dining area, but you never really know what’s happening behind the scenes. From the customer’s vantage point, things may look OK, but that alone won’t tell you about the restaurant’s dedication to cleanliness, ingredient quality and culinary best practices.

Many things can go wrong in the kitchen that could turn your nice dinner into a night laying in bed holding your stomach.

Even though culinary standards have been improving in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness each year. Of that number, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.

Celebrity Chef Robert Irvine has a shorthand that helps him determine if a restaurant will provide a healthy, botulism-free meal: He checks the bathrooms. Irvine is an English celebrity chef and talk show host who has appeared on and hosted a variety of Food Network programs, including "Restaurant: Impossible,” “Worst Cooks in America,” and “Chopped: Impossible.”

"Well, the first thing I look for is, are the bathrooms clean?" he told Business Insider, adding, "Because if the bathrooms are clean, the kitchen's clean, everything else is clean."

Irvine believes the bathroom is an excellent indicator of what the standards are like in the establishment. Irvine says that he keeps his home immaculate, starting with the restrooms, "So that's what I look for when I go to a restaurant."

The Food Network star also added that he also looks to see if the staff are happy while on the job.

Irvine isn’t the only restaurant expert checking the bathroom before ordering a meal. Liz Weiss, host of Liz's Healthy Table podcast and blog, does the same. "My biggest red flag when dining out at a restaurant is a dirty bathroom," Weiss told Food Network. "If the bathroom is a mess, it makes me think twice about the cleanliness and overall condition of the kitchen."

To further drive home the point, a food inspector went viral last year on TikTok for a video where they share the four places they won’t eat. “I’ve seen a lot,” TikTok user @toofar_north captioned their video, saying they won’t eat at buffets or places with extensive menus, unhappy employees and dirty bathrooms.

I've seen a lot. 

@toofar_north

I've seen a lot. #greenscreen #inspector #healthinspector #tips #restaurant #restauranttips #healthtok #inspectortok #fypp

Why is a large menu a red flag? If a restaurant has a large menu, it could mean that some dishes don’t have a lot of turnover, so they are made with older ingredients that may be unsafe. If there are 100 dishes on the menu, what are the chances that your order hasn’t been cooked in quite some time?

Further, restaurants with large menus may not have the tastiest food because it’s hard to perfect many different types of food. So, it’s probably better to go to a place that does a few things well than 100 things that are just okay. Just makes sure that it has a clean bathroom and that the employees appear to be happy.

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Joy

Restaurants and their customers are happily saying goodbye to QR code menus

It seemed like they'd be around forever.

via Alba Lantigua/Unsplash

A delicious-looking Mexican meal with a QR code menu

There’s a concept known as “app creep,” where every aspect of our lives is slowly becoming tethered to our smartphones in one way or another. If you spend a day at Disneyland, you must download an app to reserve your spot in line for certain attractions. Many kids’ toys now require an app to operate them or for you to download one to get the instructions. And good luck getting into a concert without transferring your tickets from your Ticketmaster app to your iPhone wallet.

Before the pandemic, we could all go to restaurants to relax and have face-to-face conversations without any help from technology. But after COVID-19 arrived, many restaurants replaced menus with a QR code on a sticker in the middle of the table.

Time previously spent poring over a menu was replaced with people staring at their phones, sometimes squinting at the text. What about a second cocktail? How about dessert? Time to fish the iPhone out of your purse or pocket to see what’s available and hope the site loads.

Even though the QR code menu didn’t ruin the entire dining experience, it’s still been seen as an infringement on the normally tech-free space by the vast majority of people.

According to CNN, a recent survey by Technomic found that about 88% of respondents preferred paper menus to digital QR codes, and 66% agreed or strongly agreed that they didn’t like QR codes because they involve pulling out your phone as soon as you sit at the table.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed felt that QR codes were “hard to read” and browse through.

So it appears that, in a rare reversal of app creep, people are pushing back on digital intrusion and demanding to see an old-school menu at their tables. A new report by MustHaveMenus, a menu management and printing platform with about 7,000 customers across the United States, shows that restaurant QR code use is declining.

According to a report in The New York Times, “From April 1 to May 16 of this year, the total number of [QR] scans has dropped by about 27 percent compared with the same period in 2021.” Mark Plumlee, the senior content manager at MustHaveMenus, added that “Fewer restaurants are creating new QR menus” and that “75 percent of their existing QR codes are essentially dormant.”

The news that QR codes are on the way out inspired a fun conversation on Twitter.

The world was drastically turned upside down during COVID-19, and now we are all working out ways to get it back to a new normal. The upside is that some significant advancements came out of the pandemic that people like for the most part and have made the world a better place, such as curbside pickup, cocktails-to-go, mRNA vaccines, telehealth, working from home, direct cash payments, free school meals, eating on sidewalks and streets, voting by mail and wearing a mask when you should be considerate of others’ health.

The world has spoken, and although some COVID-19 changes are here to stay, it’s time to make the QR code menu a thing of the past. Oh yeah, and while we’re at it, can we scrape the “6 Feet Distance” stickers off the supermarket floor already? They’re starting to look a little worn.

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