Remember the pizza that we got when we were at Mayo? Well Tony decided to send the picture of the pizza to Toppers to let them know that their product was substandard at the very least, never mind how the pizza looked when we opened the box. The Toppers Owner/Operator immediately responded. He’s agreed to refund our money and has been more than sincere about how their product was delivered to us.
As has been acknowledged, your pizza was a dreadful example of our product. The picture you sent was immediately forwarded to my team and will be discussed ad nauseam as an example of how to lose a potential customer. Life is easier when we just get it right from the beginning, and I sincerely apologize that we didn’t do that for you and your wife.
We’re family owner/operators who really do care about what we do; this business is our livelihood. And though we’re far from perfect, we fight like crazy to treat people right. This is especially true when we drop the ball.
Again, I wish we would have gotten it right the first time…but there are no do-overs in the real world. With that being said, please do let me know if there is anything further I can offer in order to compensate for the disappointment we have caused.
Keith Allen
Tony and I have made complaints over the years if food/service wasn’t up to par. We don’t really expect anything in return, but just an acknowledgment that they do better to the next customer. Half the time we never get a response. Tony wrote to Chik-fil-A about how awful their chicken sandwich was. It was oily, tasted like onion rings. Their response? They wanted to give him a coupon for the same exact sandwich! So we appreciate Keith’s honesty and apology.
Last weekend I was in full food prep mode. I ended up making 24 breakfast tacos!
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:67]
It was so busy at work yesterday right off the bat, I didn’t even have time to take a picture, so this picture was from my Instagram page – this is basically what I had yesterday – I do add a bit of fresh spinach when I reheat them at work.
It was so busy I never ended up going to the gym. I had actually brought clothes to change and walk outside – it was a gorgeous 70 degree day. I ended up eating at my desk. I brought chicken noodle soup and made a roast beef and Swiss lorraine panini. I love having a panini maker at work, although sometimes my co-workers hate it because the delicious smell wafts through the whole office.
I had “ideas” for what to make for dinner. Still have chili mac, I had ravioli, Italian sausage, burgers. Tony decided on Italian sausage, so I ran with that. I had this bag of ravioli in my freezer and decided to give it a go.
Having a red sauce with pumpkin pasta sounded like ass to me, so I made a quick alfredo – 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, 3/4 cup milk – then once that got thick I added 1 tablespoon grated parm, a pinch of nutmeg and added in chopped spinach and sliced the sausage and mixed that in as well. At the very end I tossed in some chopped diced tomato.
I loved the sauce and the sausage – but the pumpkin ravioli tasted like ass – SO sweet – almost a mixture of pumpkin and brown sugar? I tried adding some crushed red pepper flakes to try to balance some of the sweetness, but it didn’t work. I ended up eating barely 2 ravioli and threw the rest out. So at 9:30 I was still hungry so I made Tony and I some popcorn. And I am just about to put out the popcorn we didn’t eat for the chipmunks and squirrels – I haven’t seen Lyle or Kyle for a while!
When I was talking to my daughter on the way home last night, she told me she had today off, so we are meeting for lunch. Then I talked to my Mom and found out she didn’t have any plans, so she’s meeting us out for lunch too!
We have news about our next trip to Mayo – we leave next Wednesday afternoon and his heart biopsy is scheduled for Thursday. We won’t know what time until after 7:00 p.m. when we call a central scheduling number to find out exactly what time. We are actually happy we have a bit of a break before our next visit. I believe that’s the last test we need before they determine the next course of action. We sincerely appreciate your prayers, good vibes, etc.!
Happy Friday – make it a great day!
HOW do you get your corn tortillas to fold over like that without cracking in half?!
That is a great apology! Good for them. And why haven’t I made breakfast tacos???
The light has finally went on. Thank you. I have been partially cooking the corn tortillas before filling them. They are a little hard to fill at that point. Now I see….stuff them with the filling and then cook. I am such a visual person thanks for the step by step photos. Girls lunch out woo hoo! Enjoy each others company and get some rest for your Mayo trip next week.
First – that apology was very nice and I would probably try the place again just on the virtue of how heartfelt it was (and that they are a small family business:).
Second – hope your lunch with Hannah and your mom was nice!!!
And, you know I will be praying for y’all next week. Do you need anything (that I could send since I don’t live there)?
Wow. Now, that’s an apology!!!
Love love love pumpkin ravioli!!!
Glad to hear you got an apology from the pizza place. Hopefully it does not happen again.
As usual…I made breakfast (egg omelet with mozz, and spinach on flat bread) BEFORE I read your blog. Cause I always get hungry while reading…..your pictures make me hungry…so to combat my hunger and lust for what you are eating, I must eat before I read…..lol! While reading and eating I kept thinking….goodness, Biz would enjoy this egg/flatbread sandwich….because the flatbread was “Italian, hot and spicy” which I did not notice when I bought it…..boy was that a spicy sandwich for the morning!!!! You would like it!!! (whew my tongue and throat are hot)!!!!
Glad to hear you are getting some answers to your questions. It’s the waiting and wondering that is the hard part of all this. But you guys are making the best of a hard situation. I think prayers are being answered in ways we cannot see.
Have a great day and enjoy those tacos. Can you freeze them and if so how do you do it??
I love that the pizza company responded AND is refunding your money. Nice. I recently bought a bottle of fish oil gummies that tasted awful – even Jeff didn’t like them, and he’s like Mikey…I emailed the company, who apologized and said they’d send out a coupon for another bottle. Um, guess what? I don’t want another bottle! Gross.
My best wishes for the last round at Mayo – hope everything goes well and by doing all of this, Tony ends up in a much healthier place!
I’ve been so super busy traveling and packing, I took some time to read back all of your posts for the past couple of weeks. Continued prayers for you both!! At the beginning of the month, I was in SC for a week, followed by a week of heavy packing to relocate my daughter to Wisconsin and then dropping her off there and flying back on Tuesday of this week. We did have a chance to stop in at the Mars Cheese Castle off of I-94 in Kenosha. If you’ve never been, you must put this place on your bucket list!! I got two bags of curds and they sell them frozen, which is handy to get them back home cold! Take care Biz!!
We went to a local Thai rest here twice and the last visit last week was not good. This time it was for lunch and I had a doctor’s apt after. It took the waiter/manager forever to wait on us, the food was such a tiny amount that we were still hungry and only a dollar less than the nighttime portion would have been. Starving we left FINALLY when we could get his attention.
I decided to go to Yelp reviews and wrote what happened. Just got an apology last night and they are giving us a gift card for another meal. The first time we were there the guy was not friendly but the food was good so we went back. I guess it pays to let them know even if it is a review in Yelp. We are Thai food addicts and it is hard to find good Thai food here in Western NY. So, know just how you felt about the pizza. We too expected nothing so was appreciative of their response.
That’s one of the most well-written apologies I’ve seen. Kudos to them. (Although Toppers isn’t great pizza in general…) Have a great weekend, BIz!
Hi I have been reading your blog a long time. I see where you and Tony just went to Mayo Clinic. I have my first appointment Monday morning. We are not sure how to get there. I am not sure where you all live but we live 2o miles south of Chicago in a little one horse town and we don’t do tollways! We are going to take the back way but seen where you said Rt 90 had construction. Do you have any suggestions to a good way to go? I’d appreciate it. Hope Tony is better and Mayo can help him.
Linda Robinson
Hey Linda – we are in the far NW suburbs of Chicago – depending on what time you leave, the construction traffic shouldn’t be too bad if you avoid going through rush hour times. It just goes to one lane for what seems like forever.
I am not sure how you’d get there without taking a toll road – I’ll ask Tony! 😀 (p.s. sorry you have to go to Mayo, but it’s an awesome place – you’ll get the answers!)
Gotta love a company that follows through like that!
That’s a lot of tacos! Looks like the ‘old day’s of a 3am stop at taco bell on the way home from the bar 😉 Glad to hear you may be getting to the end of ‘testing’ for Tony and hopefully on to whatever needs to be done, some healing and feeling better! I’ve not found pumpkin or squash ravioli that I like for a meal – I just always think it’s too sweet and don’t like the sauces they try to put with it. If you still have some left in the freezer, you could come up with an awesome dessert item and enter it in the next ‘pumpkin’ ingredient recipe contest! Have a great weekend!
That’s decent that they responded to your complaint. I never really complain about things but I should. If only it will be better for the next customer.
Hopefully this will be your last trip and Tony knows what he has to do to get perfectly healthy again. Good luck!