Dobbies Garden Centres - Gillingham Reviews 469

Very disappointed,feel so sorry for staff,nowhere near enough,queue at coffee station just never moves,tables never cleared until it’s desperate,no serviettes,cutlery either still dirty or still wet,scone was stale guess from weekend.its got phenomenal potential but never achieved this.
This is no reflection on staff at all they deserve a medal,management rest my case.

Wow! Took my 90 year old mum to Dobbies Gillingham today. We are regular customers as mum likes to look around and have something to eat and drink after a busy shopping spree.
The restaurant is always very busy and the small amount of staff are usually run off their feet trying to serve everyone, you can always expect a fair wait to be served and food to arrive!
NOT TODAY….. the restaurant was packed but the service was SUPER quick, it was LOVELY to see more serving staff present to cope with the amount of people sitting waiting for food.
Just one request…. Please could you make the service quicker at the crowded coffee Shop too, there is always a massive queue there.
Well done Dobbies please keep it up.

Had a nice hot coffee and a scone in Dobbies Gillingham today.
Dan & Michael were serving, they are always friendly and chatty.
Well done boys 😊

The lovely helpful staff

Hot chocolate was cold and weak.
Latte was just horrible, something was off.
This was 4/9/25.
Three weeks before this, latte was bitter and skimmed milk which I never asked for.
Time to give up on Dobbies.

We only went to use soft play area. Left after 30mins as I was becoming increasing annoyed and concerned for safety of grandson I had taken (13 months old) playing in baby area on website states 0-3, but much larger children running around and jumping off obstacles with no care for little ones. No parental control and no staff around to remind parents of age range for play areas, I left as was going to lose temper with ineffective parents. Will definite not be going back and would urge anyone with small children to avoid.

What went wrong shut your doors and don't open again..If you wont to know how to run a garden centres pay a visit to Blue diamond garden centre.
How can you get it so wrong looking for staff is like being onboard the Mary Celeste. The person serving at the coffee shop is Her normal miserable self. Cake tables dirty and covers missing overpriced stale cakes. Now onto the plant section plants that are dead with no foliage but marked as full price, the so called advice pod full of rubbish this has been like this for months and clearly not in use. Water features barely running because full of green- Algae you sell the anti Algae additive why not add it this is a health issue. Plants stands with foul smelling water underneath, rubbish on floors again you sell brooms why not use one, clearly this shop is in dire trouble the Manager is not doing His job this place has steadily gone downhill most items are overpriced. We will not be renewing our loyalty card and will not shop here again...This place needs to close as its badly run and and manned by some rude and unhelpful staff when you can find one. One positive thing you could write a book on how not to run a business because your doing everything wrong and nothing right...

Smiley, professional staff. Beautifully laid out store. Good provision for indoor and outdoor activities for kids too. Plenty of parking. New exciting hot tub and pool showroom!

I have been a customer of Dobbies for donkey's years!
I have tried to adapt to the new set up in the café area, but it's a lost cause!
Average queue time for a coffee is 30 minutes! You have to weigh up whether 2 free coffees a month are worth the effort! Actually, twice in the last few months I was told I had no coffees left on my card, when it turned out they'd taken double allowance off on my last visit. More recently, I was told my card had expired,when in fact it had a month left to run! I give up - my membership has expired and I won't be returning!
Elaine at their help desk used to be marvellous! Sadly, she left and the woman with short grey hair, at till one, seems to gave taken on her role!
What a misery! She doesn't even acknowledge you when you talk to her!

Had a meal in the restaurant. Sat down by a waitress. Waited 20 mins before anyone took any interest. Ordered jacket potatoes. They arrived luke warm and seemed like they were a week old. Having complained about the initial delay I could not be bothered to complain. Will not eat there again other than coffee and cake. Since reorganising the restaurant it's all gone wrong.

Another wait of over 20 minutes at the cafe at just after 11.15am. At one point there was only one person on the cafe counter. He was working as hard and as quickly as he could but simply couldn’t keep up. The queue was about 10 deep when I joined it and kept growing.
I went to sit down whilst my wife waited-I saw several people give up and walk away.
It is interesting to note that Dobbies responds to four and five star ratings in reviews. Conversely, based on my experience, they neither respond nor take any remedial action on lower rated reviews. This gives the impression that, as a company they care little about both their staff and their customers.

Lovely store, just needs the queue for snacks and drinks altered so people don’t need to gravitate down the store and the service to be made quicker with more staff please!

I used to love going to dobbies for a cake and hot drink with my family but since all the changes it's not a very nice place to be, the staff behind the service counter are not very friendly or helpful, cutlery is not always clean or available, tables are always dirty and full of the last persons waste,it used to be cosy and a pleasant treat but oh dear and as a dobbies member I am spending less time going there , please change back to cosy

I went to the cafe today it was extremely busy, Michael who was serving was very polite and still managed to be cheerful even though he was on his own. Perhaps more staff would help.

Went to pay for some bulbs. A guy at checkout said to go to next till. She was busy talking to two people and said to go to next till. She said she was in middle of something so go back to gossiping woman. I said she was too busy talking and if they didnt want my trade i would leave. The third person in the end decided that she would serve me in the end. Goodbye to my custom.

Went into the restaurant at lunch time today and unfortunately the service was awful . We waited over an hour and a half for even a coffee and lunch took even longer . The 2 poor staff were rushed off there feet . I didn’t even get what I paid for and I asked the lovely waitress for it but she was so busy I didn’t get it.
The 2 staff I believe it was Dawn and Campbell were trying there hardest and doing an amazing job under the circumstances .
I used to come a lot for lunches with friends but it’s totally put me off.

Queue for cafe was long as usual so we opted to go to the half filled restaurant for a lunch meal. We were seated quickly -great. However 25 minutes later we still had not been seen fur drinks or orders and 2 more couples were beside us still waiting on their tables. When we told the waitress how long we’d been there she abruptly said I’ll see where you are in the queue!! We hadn’t even ordered so waited 3 more minutes, got up and left and went to another shop nearby and were served immediately. Cannot recommend the restaurant service this time as it’s gone downhill but Hempstead Valley is great 👍

Got served by Deanna. She was so rude upon arriving at our table. We have waited for a while to be served after being seated but when we asked to be served she said she needed to serve others before us. Which I can understand. But when arriving and serving us, she was rushing us to order. There are two of us wanting to order breakfast, but only after ordering 1 breakfast, she wanted to leave the table and serve someone else. She then rushed us again to order the other breakfast and drinks and when it came to the payment, she rushed us to! I do not expect this kind of customer service!

Found what we were looking for straight away, the service at the checkout was great

As well as a garden centre it is a day out ,good food etc