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| Montague, MI |
| Dog n Suds Montague, MI 8/27/09 Patron allergic to milk. Review sent in by Maureen. Just wondering if you are interested in posting info about a food allergy *non-friendly* restaurant that I encountered on vacation a few weeks ago. My son is 9yo & milk allergic. We eat out about once a month or so, on average. We eat out more often, obviously, while on vacation. This was a camping vacation, though, so we managed most meals 'at home' at the campsite. My older sisters had worked at a local Dog n Suds when I was little, though & I had fond memories of the chain. We had been talking about them amongst us sisters a few weeks before vacation & I was excited when I googled & found two Dog n Suds restaurants within 30 minutes of where we were staying on vacation in Michigan! Additionally, the info on their website and Facebook Fan page made it clear that they took pride on serving meals 'cooked to order'. Heaven for a milk-allergic family! So, one day, we drove 30 miles from our campsite to pick blueberries and then eat a late lunch at the Dog n Suds in Montague, MI. We had talked it up so much that the kids were excited about the meal, too. I stopped a passing employee, when we got there (they are all 'carhop' service & I wanted to talk to someone face-to-face regarding the allergy before ordering), explained the allergy & asked if I could read the ingredients on the hamburger buns. She was friendly, polite, understanding & wanted to help. She walked me up to the main building & went inside, after explaining that only employees could go into the building. She came out a minute later, embarrassed, shaken, nervous & said that the owner had told her to tell me that he was too busy to help us & that we would have to eat somewhere else. Well, we had been looking forward to this meal so much and had been in situations before where ingredients were not readily available, so we went to our 'Plan B'. I went on the speaker & ordered food for our family, then ordered my son a plain hamburger patty, no bun, no condiments & asked that they wipe the grill before cooking it, to make sure there was no cheese or butter there. A few minutes later, the owner found time in his busy day to come out to the parking lot and aggressively chastise me for going ahead & ordering after he had told us to leave. He refused to serve us. After we ate a boring (but safe!) meal at Burger King, we went back to the campsite. We found internet time the next day and in researching the issue discovered *another food allergic family* who was treated rudely by this same man at this same restaurant just a few days before our encounter with him. This family also had a similar experience the year before, but was hoping that it was just a 'bad day' that make the owner so rude when dealing with food allergy substitution & information requests. It would seem that this restaurant & it's owner have a history of being rude to patrons with food allergies, if they serve them at all. It is a tourist town and the restaurant itself is a tourist attraction, so I would guess that a large portion of the people who are treated badly when eating there don't bother to file a complaint and are not important to him as customers even if they do. |