Dobbies Garden Centres - Pennine Reviews 238

Visited Dobbies Garden Centre Restaurant at Shelley, W.Yorks on a Saturday morning. I fancied coffee & a breakfast, so I joined the crowd of people waiting for attention.

After a few minutes, I discovered that amongst the waiting crowd, there were actually 2 queues, one to order & one to collect drinks. So then I joined the ordering queue & for about 10 minutes patiently awaited my turn. I noticed several elderly customers who seemed to be finding standing for a lengthy period quite traumatic, so I counted myself lucky to be reasonably fit! There was only 1 member of staff dealing with each queue, but I finally got to the front of that queue & when I asked for a breakfast, I was told that first I needed to find a free table & state its number, so obligingly I went to select my table (unless someone else claims it) & returned to the front of queue number 1 where I placed my order, declared my table number & paid.

I was then asked to join the 2nd queue to collect my drinks which entailed a further wait of about 15 minutes. So then I returned to my chosen table number where I discovered that my breakfast had been waiting for me for the past 10 minutes, so was now only warm.

I then found the kitchen area & asked them to microwave my meal to heat it up. They did so obligingly, though it was a shame that no-one thought to remove the butter pack from my plate first as the contents just melted onto the plate, so rather than trouble the busy staff again, I chose to eat my toast dry.

Clearly the Dobbie operation is very badly managed. I looked for a customer feedback form to complete, but there didn't seem to be any around. I noted later that Dobbies have a telephone contact number, but I have no confidence that Dobbies would do any more than verbally apologize, so hence this report.

Maybe somebody at Dobbies does care & will make the system much more efficient & customer friendly?

Went for breakfast
Arrived at 11.15am
Was previously advised to get a reserve sign as you have to get a table number in order to order and I have ordered only to find someone seated at the table when I returned
I had to wait in a queue as the reserve signs were not visible. The lady who was taking orders was having lengthy conversations with the customers in front of me.
I managed to get a reserved sign then stood in a queue again to order food. The till operator had another lengthy conversation with the lady in front of me. I got to the front only to be told that breakfast was no longer available 11.32am) and there are only jacket potatoes and toasties available till 12.
I explained what I had observed and objected to not being able to order breakfast.
The cashier denied this had happened and took up a defensive rude attitude
I therefore ordered a coffee and had to wait 30 minutes until I was able to order lunch

Ordered garden furniture on 18th June was told it would be delivered 3/5 days. I waited for the furniture to be delivered but after a week or so I contacted customer service, I was told the furniture hadn’t been booked out.
They not only got the address wrong but the phone number aswell???
When they finally delivered the furniture after five weeks it was damaged. I got in touch with customer service again and was told they would offer 5% discount to get it repaired. I said no thanks just come and pick the furniture back up…. It took another four weeks for that to happen!! Then another week for them to arrange for my refund.
Customer service is disgraceful I found them not to be very helpful. I lost count on the amount of emails and phone calls. It’s frustrating that they are happy to take your money and then can’t bothered to sort out the problem. So finally after ten weeks it’s been resolved I will never ever use Dobbies again.

Great informed staff in the restaurant and the garden centre.
Great products , often at discounted prices.

On this second visit to the cafe, to give them a chance we were, again, extremely disappointed. Almost everything we asked for had run out from the lunch menu. The people in front and behind me were likewise disappointed with what was on offer. What we did have was perfectly fine. The cashier got the only available flavour of soup wrong, so one of us ended up with soup they didn’t expect. We won’t visit again.

There were many plants available but not enough check out stations available to process the purchases quickly.

Cafe lovely, staff pleasant and good selection of goods and plants.
Bit disappointed that we bought the hanging flutter butter but there wasn’t any pods to go with it. I ended up having to order one on line from Pets at home.

Visited the Pennine Dobbies garden centre today. Filled a large trolley with plants and after becoming a member, the bill was only £88. I thought this was really good value considering one of the plants was £25 on its own. The service was very friendly and helpful too. We also had a spot of lunch whilst we were there and that was reasonably priced, served quickly and it was nice simple food.

Always enjoy a visit to Dobbies

Good food, good service,quality plants.

Called in with my friend for a light lunch and to redeem my 2 free hot drinks. Service was, again, great.

Had a trip to the restaurant as we had already shopped earlier in the week. Good food and service and brightened up a dull day weather wise

We had lunch in the restaurant it was our first visit to this garden centre and we found the food and service to be very good. The overhaul visit was enjoyable its always nice to go look around a new garden centre

Two for one on scones and good price for reduced plants.

Took my daughter and granddaughter for coffee and cake to celebrate mine and my granddaughter's birthdays. Brilliant service, yummy cake and coffee. Most of all, brilliant, friendly staff and very clean establishment. Love Dobbies x

Always happy with the garden centre at Penninne. Good plants, nice coffee and helpful staff. All good.

Lovely place but the same stock rotated. No new ornaments and gifts. Once you've been it only changes for Christmas and summer furniture. Poor company buyer

Very nice staff, nicely set out displays, nice cafe with good coffee. Good prices in Christmas sale.

There was a picture of the Christmas dinner £12 95 what came left a lot to be desired. The turkey was lovely two Brussel sprouts ( frozen ones) the picture showed 5 . There were carrots in the sample picture but we got none, and when we asked we were told only seasonal veg available . Well we have carrots all year round so I don’t understand . My wife’s parsnip were hard and they were probably frozen . Anyway won’t be have Christmas dinner there again.