Pizza Ranch review: Part 2

After having a previous few thoughts on our local Pizza Ranch, after today, I had some more thoughts which I vocalized to the owner. At least this time it wasn't so much about things happening to me, per say, but to the entire experience. Are you ready for this?

My husband and I went out to eat today for lunch. We really like the salad bar, so we were excited. Thankfully, we didn't have any issues with that. In fact, my husband was quite excited to see they had cottage cheese on the salad bar. He eats cottage cheese on his salad. I think he's strange for that, but that's not what this is about.

I watched two small girls who were probably about 6 years old wander through the restaurant and up to the buffet many times helping themselves to food. I wasn't paying attention to what they were getting until I seen the one little girl bring a plate back that was heaping full of chicken. There had to be at least 6 big pieces of chicken on her plate. And she was sure excited to show her mom. I joked that she must be eating the skin only and not the meat. So we started paying attention to the empty plates coming out, except nothing out of the ordinary was noted.

That was until my husband says, "she has chicken on her plate" as he carefully told me the mom was coming out of the back room with several pieces of chicken. So I watched her. She walked right up to the buffet and dumped the chicken back into the tub of chicken. I was appalled! I think I had a thousand thoughts going through my head. What do I do? Should I tell someone? Should I talk to her?

I decided to go tell the people in the kitchen. I first explained my story to a kitchen helper, who then had me tell my story to the owner. She was appalled. I explained several times the story, how the little girl kept getting chicken and then the mom brought chicken back up to the buffet 10 minutes later and dumped it back in. The owner immediately told the kitchen helper to pull the chicken and make new. The tub of chicken was heaping full and it was 11:50am....just in time for the lunch rush.

Then the owner decides she's going to go talk to this lady and walks back there. I proceed through the buffet. Soon the owner comes back and tells me she talked to her and thanks me (again) for making her aware of what happened. I asked her what the lady said. The owner then tells me what she said. "I thought it was ok to do that!" So the owner tells her it's never ok to take food onto your plate, back to your table and return it to the buffet. Wow.

I was speechless. And I couldn't make eye contact with the lady again. I was floored. It could have been someone injecting drugs into it or something and then returning it to the buffet. It actually can bring many scary thoughts into my head.