Winnipeg Restaurants

[Kris22]

Originally Posted by headhorse

yeah, it's interesting to describe stellas as "hipster". stella's is where I can take my parents for breakfast because clementine is too wild for them

I honestly don't think anyone would describe Stellas as "hipster" anymore. Once they expanded to Grant, Pembina and the airport they just became "local". I don't think anything with several locations can be considered hipster because too many people would know about it and therefore make it mainstream.

I imagine any business would be happy to grow into a "local" and successful chain rather than just stick to being a small hipster hole in the wall in Osborne Village. So cheers to them

[h0twired]

Originally Posted by headhorse

yeah, it's interesting to describe stellas as "hipster". stella's is where I can take my parents for breakfast because clementine is too wild for them

Stella's is yuppie-boomer.

It's people in their 50-60s in their outdoorsy active attire.

[wardlow]

I remember when a prominent local urban commentator told me that Stella's opening in the Plug-In ICA building at Portage and Colony was a bad move (from the University's and the neighbourhood's perspective) because Stella's was a "niche" restaurant.

That wasn't true then (circa 2011), and certainly isn't true now in 2018 when Stella's is basically Target and Cora's is Wal-Mart.

The hip crowd have all moved on to Clemintine, the Tallest Poppy, and I don't know where else.

[esquire]

When I described Stella's as having a certain urban hipster cachet, I didn't mean that their customers were necessarily hipsters. It's more that it's part of the image they project... the locations (up to now, at least), their staff, the type of food they sell, that sort of thing. It plays into how they sell their product.

Think of Parlour Coffee as a similar example... what if they opened up a location in a strip mall on Meadowwood? Something like that might lead to short term gains, but in the long term it would be significantly off brand and likely hurt their business.

[Ando]

Originally Posted by wardlow

I remember when a prominent local urban commentator told me that Stella's opening in the Plug-In ICA building at Portage and Colony was a bad move (from the University's and the neighbourhood's perspective) because Stella's was a "niche" restaurant.

That wasn't true then (circa 2011), and certainly isn't true now in 2018 when Stella's is basically Target and Cora's is Wal-Mart.

The hip crowd have all moved on to Clemintine, the Tallest Poppy, and I don't know where else.

There are lots of students who go to the Plug-in location. And lots of students work at all the locations. i don't think we can stereotype the Stella's clientele. And I think calling it Target is unfair.

[headhorse]

-

[Wolf13]

Originally Posted by headhorse

yeah, it's interesting to describe stellas as "hipster". stella's is where I can take my parents for breakfast because clementine is too wild for them

Well, it's the original clementine of Winnipeg, you could say. But yes, it also took me some effort to get my parents to Clementine. Once there, they were pleased.

Originally Posted by esquire

When I described Stella's as having a certain urban hipster cachet, I didn't mean that their customers were necessarily hipsters. It's more that it's part of the image they project... the locations (up to now, at least), their staff, the type of food they sell, that sort of thing. It plays into how they sell their product.

Think of Parlour Coffee as a similar example... what if they opened up a location in a strip mall on Meadowwood? Something like that might lead to short term gains, but in the long term it would be significantly off brand and likely hurt their business.

This...

Originally Posted by Ando

There are lots of students who go to the Plug-in location. And lots of students work at all the locations. i don't think we can stereotype the Stella's clientele. And I think calling it Target is unfair.

As per above, you can just look at the staff. Many sport the "i protest on the side" haircut/attire so despite their market prevalence, they haven't really veered off course from their original product.

[blue4life]

Speaking of Stella's...

https://instagram.com/notmystellas?u...d=6uhmk4lz2u3f

[rrskylar]

So half Baked Expectations gets shut down by the city’s health dept., who knew you couldn’t operate a restaurant without hot water!?!

[h0twired]

Originally Posted by blue4life

Speaking of Stella's...

https://instagram.com/notmystellas?u...d=6uhmk4lz2u3f

Lame.

If you are going to complain about a company at least have the courage to do it without being anonymous.

Anonymous protesting isn't much different than trolling.

[windypeg]

Originally Posted by h0twired

Lame.

If you are going to complain about a company at least have the courage to do it without being anonymous.

Anonymous protesting isn't much different than trolling.

Yeah those are pretty dumb. I worked at a Stella's for about a year and a half while I was in school and it was definitely the best of many restaurant jobs I had, admittedly that industry as a whole is pretty rough. But it is what it is, the food service industry is crummy jobs that you put up with while you're in school until you can get a real job, deal with it. I can't believe how may of the complaints are about being told to smile or be happy with the customers... like, telling some random woman out on the street she needs to smile more is inappropriate. But when you work in the service industry that's part of your job. Every company has expectations that front-line staff present themselves in a friendly way. If you're scowling at work in a service job your manager has every right to criticize how you're interacting with people. That's not sexist it's just good customer service.

[esquire]

Scrolling through the list of 100+ complaints on the Not My Stella's feed, it seems that the problems go way beyond merely telling people to smile.

Frankly, Stella's sounds like it's run by petty tyrants who make it a crappy place to work, and I don't think that just saying that's how the restaurant business operates is a valid excuse.

[drew]

Originally Posted by esquire

Scrolling through the list of 100+ complaints on the Not My Stella's feed, it seems that the problems go way beyond merely telling people to smile.

Frankly, Stella's sounds like it's run by petty tyrants who make it a crappy place to work, and I don't think that just saying that's how the restaurant business operates is a valid excuse.

Meh. I was a dishpig and then cook in several restaurants from 15 through about 21. I can remember eating my food during a brief break in the staff bathroom during a shift at Earls. Shitty shifts, split shifts, blah blah.

The fact working at Stella's seems to be the same experience as working anywhere else is somewhat of an excuse. I mean, people have a choice to work there. If it sucks that bad - quit. And go find a job at another restaurant.

Incidentally, despite having jobs being a dishpig, puddle vacuumer at softball parks, etc. etc. my least favorite job was bagging groceries at Safeway. I hated that job - even though there was ample time for breaks and other union job type perks.

[cheswick]

Originally Posted by esquire

Scrolling through the list of 100+ complaints on the Not My Stella's feed, it seems that the problems go way beyond merely telling people to smile.

Frankly, Stella's sounds like it's run by petty tyrants who make it a crappy place to work, and I don't think that just saying that's how the restaurant business operates is a valid excuse.

If you started a not my earls and not my moxies and not my boston pizza I'm sure you'd get similar complaints from disgruntled ex-employees.

[drew]

Originally Posted by cheswick

If you started a not my earls and not my moxies and not my boston pizza I'm sure you'd get similar complaints from disgruntled ex-employees.

I suspect in the post "me-too" world - the "not my Earls" website might prove to a tad more disgruntled that other restuarants...

[ywgwalk]

Originally Posted by h0twired

Lame.

If you are going to complain about a company at least have the courage to do it without being anonymous.

Anonymous protesting isn't much different than trolling.

I believe this originated with someone posting complaints from their non-anoymous account and this was simply a place to put all the "me too's" that started pouring in.

[CoryB]

Re Stella's, not saying this makes it "right" but if you start reading up on how Amazon treats its fulfilment centre staff you will see very similar stories. It isn't so much any one place is a bad place to work but generally places will let their managers push their other staff as far as they can before a regulator steps in and puts them on check. Heck, a senior Google executive was basically forcing subordinates into want amounted to an internal sex trafficking ring and when he was "caught" they gave him $90 million to walk away quietly...

[windypeg]

Originally Posted by esquire

Scrolling through the list of 100+ complaints on the Not My Stella's feed, it seems that the problems go way beyond merely telling people to smile.

Frankly, Stella's sounds like it's run by petty tyrants who make it a crappy place to work, and I don't think that just saying that's how the restaurant business operates is a valid excuse.

I worked at 6 other restaurants in town, some chains and some local, and Stella's was the first and only place where I actually got proper breaks. The whole industry sucks, maybe I got lucky and was in a good location with good managers, but Stella's was miles better than the rest. That doesn't make it OK but the reality is staff are overworked, stressed, and treated like crap in basically every restaurant out there. Everywhere is understaffed, always. Margins are very thin, if you want to stay in business you need to be super strict about labour costs and food waste which creates "nazi" managers. Staffing is tumultuous because most of your staff are teenagers who don't really give a shit and will call in sick to go party with their buddies. It's chaos all the time, highly stressful for both managers and staff and there's no real way to fix it unless you want to start paying twice as much for your tapas.

The whole industry is full of blatant labour code violations and of course that doesn't make it OK, but shaming one place that's actually better than most isn't going to fix anything. I think the only way these things would change is if you basically unionized the entire industry and doubled wages which I'm fairly sure would devastate the industry. Unless you're willing to pay twice as much for your meal this is just the way the food business is.

[blueandgoldguy]

Originally Posted by blue4life

Speaking of Stella's...

https://instagram.com/notmystellas?u...d=6uhmk4lz2u3f

Stellas sounds like the Catholic Church! Lie, deny abuse and reward the abusers!

Pretty embarrassing, especially for the owners and the CEO who may very well be involved in said harrassment...allegedly.

Rest assured, when this many people come forward, it is pretty well a foregone conclusion that harrassment and abuse is widespread and tolerated within a company. Where there is smoke, there is fire.

There is simply no reason to rationalize or explain away incidents of staff sexual harrassing other staff as par for the restaurant industry as some comments above me appear to do under the guise of "that's the way the restaurant business is."

[wags_in_the_peg]

Not my kind of place, but probably will fill a need for some
https://www.livekindly.co/plant-base...od-restaurant/