Brakes Reviews 

Even one star is one too many for this so-called company.
Ordering goods is a lottery. I’m always wondering what they won’t deliver this time, or what they’ll get wrong.
I order 5 lettuces and get 40 – same with the gherkins. I ordered sliced chicken and got chicken mince that bore no resemblance to the photo on the website.
I order tinned tomatoes and get tomato purée. And so it goes on.
Perhaps you should stick to digging drainage ditches rather than delivering food, as you clearly haven’t got a clue about it.
You’re the worst company I’ve ever dealt with in my more than 30 years working in the kitchen.

We were stopping at the New Bath Hotel and spa on the 4th of September when a Brakes delivery lorry arrived to deliver food around seven this morning which is fine.He made the delivery then decided to start up the which was right outside our bedroom window and leave it running for over 20 mins with the sack truck at the back of the lorry.
I went to reception to ask if they could get the driver to turn it off.The driver came back to his lorry,which he didn’t turn off but went off to have a cigarette.
Complete disregard to the fact he’d left it running…….outside a hotel bedroom windows.
Poor form.

the driver was amazing really got me out of a pickle
Liam Perry

Great company. Great products. Very professional.

Our account keeps being blocked because your system repeatedly fails to take payment from our registered card. When this happens, we are then locked out of our account and unable to place orders.

This has now happened multiple times, and each time we are left to resolve the problem ourselves. Nobody contacts us, despite the issue appearing to be with your payment system rather than anything on our side.

We have been a Brakes customer for over two years, have never missed a payment, and have consistently paid our account. It is therefore extremely frustrating to have our ability to order repeatedly stopped because of a fault that is outside our control.

Bidfood continue to approach us for our business, and at this point it is becoming difficult to understand why we should remain with Brakes when seemingly nobody is concerned that we are repeatedly unable to order.

We would much rather get this resolved properly and continue our relationship with Brakes, but we cannot keep going through the same issue time after time. If this cannot be permanently resolved, we will have to seriously consider moving our account elsewhere.

Amazing Customer Support, Great Warehouse team, Products rarely let me down and if they do fixed quickly, very clear and easy to use ordering site. Accounts manager works closely even with small business' to ensure good growth.

simple and easy access

Amazing service helpful and very good company

I would prefer to give them a 1*. They fail to deliver the goods (of which went down in quality massively, whilst increasing price constantly) and then they constantly hassle you with debt collectors for items you didn't receive.

They are verging on a scam of a company. If you want to get a decent service, decent food and a company that doesn't scam you then use Bid Food and avoid Brakes at all cost.

Unfortunately their customer service is quite poor. They have untrained staff who have no clue to help customers. Please invest in training your customer service teams.

Do not use this company. FIND ANOTHER SUPPLIER.

Completely incapable of delivering the correct items each week. Items just left off the delivery with no explanation and no real urgency to rectify the mistake.

Find another supplier!!

Hi Brakes reward system is great opportunity however it needs consistency in deleivering the products that are ordered through reward system -previously we ordered beverage cooler it did not arrive after many months it was cancelled automatically without notifying .
No we ordered the vacuum cleaner but did not arrive although 2 other items arrived - consistency is a issue -there is no proper communication, perhaps Brakes should be really sure of offering this and following up on this orders as a customer it feels like begging and not sure if this was intended by Brakes for introducing this Reward system. Hope there will be prompt response and action taken to set this right. Thank you

great and reliable company very rarely out of the stock we require and even warn of busy periods during the year prompting to stock up ahead of time to prevent delays which is super helpful from a business perspective

I would like to tell you about your driver John Wright.
He is Very polite and looks like he is a outstanding Employee .
Keep up the good work John.

Great attentive onboarding rep and area manager. delivery driver approachable and accommodating. Far less supply issues than our alternative suppliers and a larger range. well done and thank you

Absolutely shocking service. We are extremely unhappy.

Every single week there are items missing from our delivery. Yesterday’s delivery was the final straw. Our delivery slot is between 8:00 am and 12:00 pm. Delivery arrived after 12:00 pm. It’s been happening so many times.

On arrival, a box of fries, eggs, and two boxes of salad were missing. I had to point this out to the driver because we had been charged for them. With the amount of stock delivered, it is impossible to check every single use-by date while the driver waits. If I did, the driver would be here for two hours.

After the driver left, we discovered that instead of the five packs of gammon we had ordered only two had been delivered, and three packs of bacon had been substituted without any notification. It almost felt like this had been deliberately hidden by placing the two packs of gammon on top.

To make matters worse, both packs of gammon that were delivered were already out of date. The delivery was made on 26/06, but the gammon had a use-by date of 24/06. The three packs of bacon had a use-by date of the same day they were delivered, giving us no usable shelf life. As I mentioned before there is impossible to check every single used by date. But I think we will need to start doing that and unfortunately driver will be stuck here for a while.I took picture from the label and used by date for a proof and evidence.

We contacted Brakes to request delivery of the missing items today, but they refused.

This level of service is completely unacceptable. We run a busy kitchen and regularly cater for functions. Because of Brakes’ repeated mistakes, we are unable to provide the full service our customers expect. We pay for goods that are missing, receive incorrect items, and are even supplied with out-of-date products. This has happened far too many times and needs to be addressed.

After 24 years in hospitality, I can honestly say this has been the worst experience I've ever had with a food service supplier.

Over the course of a month, Brakes repeatedly failed to deliver complete orders, and on several occasions failed to deliver at all. This wasn't an isolated mistake—it became the norm.

During one of the hottest weeks of the year, with temperatures approaching 40°C, we were left without bottled water, soft drinks, milk, chocolate, napkins and numerous other essential items. Our customers didn't blame Brakes—they blamed us. My staff had to deal with angry members and guests because we simply had no stock to sell.

Some examples include:

Entire deliveries failing to arrive.
Orders arriving a day late.
Full cages of products missing from deliveries.
Wedding supplies, including spirits, missing from orders, forcing emergency trips to local retailers.
Drivers informing us that milk and frozen products had been "left out in the sun" and were therefore spoiled before delivery.
No proactive communication whatsoever about unavailable items, despite Brakes advertising live stock tracking and customer notifications.

What frustrated me most wasn't just the mistakes—it was the complete lack of communication. Time after time I discovered products were missing only when the lorry arrived. Nobody contacted us beforehand to explain what wouldn't be delivered or to help us make alternative arrangements.

My Business Development Manager, Luke Styman, apologised and explained the company was suffering from a failed IT update and a depot move. While I appreciate businesses face operational challenges, those problems should not become the customer's problem. If you know you cannot provide the service you've promised, be honest and tell your customers so they can make other arrangements.

The contrast with another supplier couldn't have been greater. After placing an emergency order elsewhere late one afternoon, I received a phone call within six minutes confirming delivery for the following morning and advising me of one item that was out of stock. That's customer service: honest, proactive and professional.

Sadly, Brakes offered none of that during our experience.

The result was weeks of unnecessary stress, hours spent sourcing emergency replacement stock, disappointed customers, damage to our own reputation, and a significant amount of management time wasted fixing problems that should never have existed.

I've now taken my business elsewhere and, based on my experience, I cannot recommend Brakes. If reliability, communication and accountability are important to your business, my experience suggests you should consider other suppliers.

Completely incapable of delivering. We've ordered the same amounts every week for months and almost every delivery is either late, cancelled or rescheduled without notice.

We've spent endless ours with Customer Support, or sales rep and even the regional manager who's given us every reassurance that "now it's fixed" but nothing changes.

The only saving grace of this place is the sales rep who has been an absolute rockstar trying to fight for us, as clearly Brakes is only able to delivery products when someone internally screams and shouts loud enough, and even then it's not always enough.

REPLY
Since I can't reply to your comment I'll reply here, I've been in contact with your customer care team repeatedly, they can't do anything except "let people know and escalate" but nothing ever changes

the driver Jason smith is fantastic allways goes out his way and always happy

easy to you website, lots of different products, delivery always on time and friendly staff and the cash back rewards is amazing.