Franchise Restaurant Chains

I regularly eat in my local Pizza Hut and enjoy the food and the experience very much - probably explains my size!

On returning from holiday recently therefore when looking for somewhere to stop for lunch my wife and I chose a Pizza Hut just off our route.

To say it was totally different from our usual experience would be an understatement.  The restaurant was dirty, the staff were uninterested and seemingly untrained and the service was hence appalling.

In view of this I filled in their customer satisfaction survey, expecting to receive a call or email from someone to discuss my concerns further.

When this was not forthcoming I wrote to the manager of the branch, detailing my concerns - this was on the 3rd October.  On the 17th October I received a reply, dated 5th October but as it was posted first class I don't know where the delay occurred. Either the Post Office were slow or the manager backdated it to make it look better.

The reply merely served to reinforce my concerns - apparently I should not have raised it with the manager but gone straight to Head Office!  The manager's explanation was that he was on holiday at the time - apparently his staff cannot run the restaurant if he is not there.

To compensate me for the poor experience, he would like to offer me a voucher, but get this, it can only be used at that Pizza Hut.  So I would have to travel out of my way to use this voucher and would also have to trust his word that all the issues had been addressed - I don't think so!

One of the supposed benefits of restaurant chains is that you should be able to expect the same standards of food and service wherever you go.  We seem to have found the exception to the rule here as we have not previously had a bad experience.

It seems that Pizza Hut are a franchise operation, part of the Yum group.  It is time the big bosses saw what some franchisees are doing to their image and took action.

** Update - November 2012 **

After writing to customer service and receiving no reply I took the next step and emailed the CEO of Yum.

Finally a satisfactory response.  I was contacted by the area manager responsible for that region and was offered a full and genuine apology, a promise that the issues would be investigated, and a gift card I could use at ANY Pizza Hut.

Why it had to get to this stage I have no idea, but I am happy with the outcome and grateful to the area manager who finally did what those below them should have done.

The company's reputation has been restored with me!  Shame it was necessary to go right to the top.