Restaurant Depot

Your employees at the Howell Mill location have to be the worst I’ve ever run into. Their lack of friendliness was the most shocking. I talked with 3 employees and each one of them had a hostel attitude, zero customer service skills and definitely showed a general disdain towards customers. I would will not return.

I did not know this place existed, it has everything that you need to a restaurant/​club. Food and all!
It’s a one stop shop which I love. I went 30 mins before closing so it wasn’t crowded at all.

Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of good things about this place from the refrigerated space (carrying all the produce, cheese, meats, and seafood) you could ever need down to the restaurant fixtures including take-​out boxes and things you couldn’t find at Costco. Including a 3kg jar of Nutella. I want to know which restaurant in town buys this…
So here’s where I struggle with liking this place: service. We tried buying 24 lbs of fresh sea scallops but they only had 6 lbs available. They said they could give us the same price for 24+ lbs. Granted, I understand that there’s maybe about a 1.50/lb difference, but money counts. Even though once it scanned, it seemed as if they did give us the special bulk price, the price was wrong. Hell comes when you’re trying to get this corrected. There didn’t seem to be a «manager» or «customer service» person to take care of this. We waited for about 30 – 35 minutes before another cashier could help us and she was attempting to help another customer at the same time. They’re not short-​staffed, but the staff is slow. The second cashier tried to adjust the price on our purchase, but ended up returning more money to us. Did we just get a free bag of scallops?
I know that we weren’t alone on getting issues resolved as I saw other customers getting impatient. Restaurant Depot, I don’t know how you do your books, especially at this location, but I hope you hire more competent people or at least improve your customer service.

So where do you go when you need 500 Styrofoam containers for cupcakes? Why Restaurant Depot of Course. And 10,000 straws or Chef Shoes… you already know the answer. So this is a really cool «in the industry» place that alot of your local noshing grounds get some of their last minute needs. You do need a small business license and a membership but if you can get in, its a sweet place to get anything for front or back of the house.
Essentially think a Costco or Sam’s Club for the industry.

Whoa! Having a vague idea that places like this existed, I got my first introduction — Restaurant Depot is a to the trade place where restaurants get all kinds of things like those to go boxes, massive bags of onions, tablecloths and more. I needed to buy a massive quantity of plates for an upcoming event, and Costco just wasn’t cutting it… Not having an actual restaurant, I found out that you can actually get in on a one day shopping pass — the counter in the front will provide you with a little slip of paper with your temporary ID, and you and your industrial sized cart are on your merry little way. There are quite a few of these ‘stores for restaurants,’ and this one is actually a chain… but I chose it because it was the closest in proximity. It’s over in industrial-​ish no man’s land, but was quite the eye opener. One of the workers was also very helpful, so high five for customer service.