This is a response to my article on “Cheesecake Factory, Why do you Hate Vegetarians” a month ago. Their response by Customer Relations was timely; my posting about it is not. So kudos to Customer Relations!

The end of the story I find more disappointing. Basically, they put the onus of checking each and every dish on their vegetarian customer. Their suppliers will change ingredients in their products without notice, so they can’t print permanent menus. One ingredient changes; they’d have to reprint all their menus.

Perhaps I’m coming across like the whiny, spindly high-maintenance grass-eater. But consider were you to be traveling in a foreign country where everyone eats dog (insert your own personal abhorrent foodstuff as for all I know, some of you would enjoy eating Petey). And then you go into a restaurant which boasts it caters to non-dog eating foreigners. The menu has listings of “Dog meat… Dog meat … cheese sandwich … dog meat…” You order the cheese sandwich. Halfway through the sandwich, you discover a piece of medium-rare Dalmatian snout. That’s kinda what it’s like being a vegetarian: I live in a foreign land where eating meat is the custom. Someone tried to accommodate and accidentally fed me [dog]. I let them know; they told me I should be more careful.

Again, Cheesecake Factory’s head office was responsive enough to call me directly within 48 hours of my suggestion. They did give me a list of foods on their menu that are (or can be special ordered to be) vegetarian-friendly. However, the bottom line? They’re not going to change anything. You can not trust their menu if you are a vegetarian, and in my case, the new waiter, upon hearing my wife say we are both vegetarians, made no mention of the corpse-juice that would be on my plate. Apparently I should have known to distrust not only the menu, but also the waiter.

I give the responsiveness of customer service an A.
The result? I’ll be generous and say C-minus.
They did send me a gift card. I’ll probably go back since hey; free food. I’ll just have to be extra careful to ask specifically of a manager whether the fettuccine contains braised armadillo chitterlings.