The Pod Hotel Rooftop Lounge

Wow…so I’m not writing this post to bash the place or anything, more so because it just amazed me. I headed to the Rooftop bar at The Pod Hotel, don’t go into Salvation Taco, just head up the hotel’s elevator to the 17th fl and it was after work so it was pretty packed. We went for a birthday and got on a really long line to order some drinks. What was so amazing about the bar?

IT TOOK 27 MINUTES TO ORDER A DRINK. Yep, 27 minutes. Though I guess I should be considered lucky. One Yelp reviewer said that their wait was 45 minutes.

So if you are looking for a drink or to hang out with friends, I would steer clear of this rooftop and only head there later on in the night versus dealing with the after work crowd. Why in the world did it take 27 minutes to order our drinks? I’m not a restaurateur, but just some easy observations that anyone would notice:

1) There are only two bartenders.
2) They make fancy drinks that take too long to make. I watched a bartender make drinks where he had to wait for foam to settle down to fill up glasses more, sprinkle garnishes, spritz grapefruit peels and so on. With the amount of people that come in combined with the type of drinks they are serving, that menu is just not conducive for getting drinks out in the speed they need to.
3) The bartenders like to drink. While I waited for almost half and hour to just order my drinks, one bartender had two shots, the other one. Not sure how many they had before or after I was on line, but I would assume more.
4) Not sure if they were tipsy or frazzled, but lots of bottles were being knocked and spilled therefore causing more delays.
5) They kept running out of glasses. Well, they would’ve had more if they stopped doing shots I guess.

Again, not writing this to be mean. But a 27 minute wait for a drink was something that I had to share. I kind of want to go back and retime them to be honest to see if it gets better or worse.