Famous Dave's Reviews

Their management is redundant and ineffective. The ownership of the franchise follows the example of corporate and does its absolute best to make sure they don't pay competitive salary, putting themselves in the pay scale more appropriate for fast food or fast casual, or perhaps Denny's. In this, they put themselves in the sad position of having to hire a lot of less-than-desirable candidates. They use bait-and-switch tactics when negotiating salaries, and new managers find themselves having to chase down consistently "unavailable" owners and HR personnel in order to shame them into making their checks match the promise of their offer letters. Although the restaurants are quite slow and desolate most of the time, they also have a strange way of always being understaffed. This gives what hourly staff they DO have an unprecedented amount of leverage over the management, as well as having the effect of putting the managers in the difficult position of having to try to supervise, maintain guest service quality, and work a particular station. Whether it be hosting or cooking on the fry station, this anchors the manager to really only effectively supervising the very station which he/she has had to cover. The locations also tend to run short of a manager, or two, only exacerbating the situation I've described above. The menu is outdated and stale; the perception of value is rather weak; and the alarming lack of consistency between locations is immense. Still serving overpriced food on plastic deli trays and TRASH CAN LIDS. The employees typically look a mess in faded T-shirts, ratty jeans, and brilliantly bloodshot eyes. Overall, it is a feeling of lack of care, not just for their managers and employees-- but also toward guests, food quality, and aesthetics-- that punctuates the Famous Dave's experience from all sides.