Tap & Barrel Restaurants Employer Reviews

It was fun to work here for a summer season but the management style isn't great. They make you do 3x8 hr bussing shifts before you become a server so you "know how the place works" - even if you come in with multiple years experience in serving. ...

It was fun to work here for a summer season but the management style isn't great. They make you do 3x8 hr bussing shifts before you become a server so you "know how the place works" - even if you come in with multiple years experience in serving. You also have to do a bunch of shadow shifts before you can get started. As an experienced server I found this frustrating. Some of the managers that worked at Bridges the year I was there were awful. They would arrive late to the pre-shift and then scold people who arrived at the same time as them. They were super uptight about a bunch of unimportant things. I think they need to get real and accept that for a lot of people, a server job is a casual job and not their career - if the managers are terrible people, those servers will just leave and find something else. It was also crazy to me that they constantly went on and on about how generous they are with the 50% off food discount, when all the other places I've worked in Vancouver give you a free meal on shift. You also can't take breaks. I didn't like the atmosphere amongst servers but I think that's because Bridges is so big and so busy, you don't have time to get to know anyone. The tips were great.

Beautiful location, great kitchen staff, great core front of house staff, great tips during patio season and buyout events.

The culture when I started was fantastic, but got consistently worse as Tap & Barrel upper management and HQ became incr...

Beautiful location, great kitchen staff, great core front of house staff, great tips during patio season and buyout events.

The culture when I started was fantastic, but got consistently worse as Tap & Barrel upper management and HQ became increasingly more corporate. First summer our wait times for a table had people lining up down the block, when I left it was significantly less. We went through four GMs in that time, can’t speak to how things are going now.