Good advertising - Good plan, Poor execution!!!!

<p>With Turn n Tender's birthday special held at Vaal Maal Vanderbijlpark, my wife anticipated a lot of attraction for the event and thus made the effort to make reservations for Sunday 21 May 2017 @ 12H30. We also had another appointment in the afternoon that we had made and could not postpone although much later. We arrived 15 min before our booked time to ensure we are in time as per our reservation. When arriving at the restaurant, we found a lot of people as we suspected. We even met friends that also turned up for the birthday special. They however did not book at all, as they were told that they must just turn up, they will be accommodated. We stood around for some 5 min in front of the restaurant as there was a large crowd of people standing in front of the restaurant waiting to enter. My wife made her way through the crowd to inform the staff at the door entrance of TnT that we have arrived as per our booking.</p> <p>To our surprise we were told that the TnT booking system has stopped woprking and that they are running with a manual paper list on a clip board. We were patient as these things happen. I myself went to the one staff member about 30 min later to enquire what the progress was. The gentlemen informed me that the seating are running late as people are taking their time. This is still tolerable as it is not in the hands of the staff to hurry any customer. Whilst speaking to the staff member, he only then wrote our surname on the paper list. Well 45 min later we decided the abandon the effort as we ran out of time and the effort we made to book upfront counted for nothing as it seems as if it became a “first come first serve” effort.</p> <p>The question is where is your backup plan if you host such an important function? This is electronically and manually. It seems as if the staff was left to rescue the situation with best effort from their own knowledge. Big occasions calls for big backup plans. Sorry we missed it after we came to the party bringing our side to make proper reservations and enabling TnT to manage such a big demand via reservations. Don’t know if I will try my luck in future.</p>