Wild Goats: Fresh & Funky Fine Diner

Wild Goats is a staple breakfast restaurant in Kent but their business practices are running it into the ground. The restaurant is incredibly overpriced for mediocre food with poor presentation. I wouldn't be surprised if they close their doors in the near future. The only reason they get an extra star (2/5 stars) is for their community events and programming that they do for kids. The inside of the restaurant is cramped, and sometimes the floors are dirty further making their prices unreasonable. Having visited many times, the food isn't for me. On many occasions the eggs have been over cooked on the edges to the point where they are crunchy on the edges. As a breakfast place, they should be experts in cooking eggs. Wild Goats has done many changes with their tipping structure which has been too many changes to keep up with, and quite frankly as a consumer I don't understand. When they moved away from tipping the menu prices were raised to account for this which is fine but since they have reintroduced tipping the prices have reduced but not significantly. Food costs have increased but their prices are still overpriced for a breakfast restaurant that can't cook eggs properly.

Unassuming spot in Kent that shares parking with a medical office next door. Why do I mention this? Many of the parking spots you would think are for the restaurant are NOT. Once we parked, we walked in the front entrance and were immediately greeted by staff. It must be said that the staff are the high point of the experience. They were patient in answering questions and thoroughly explained different meal options. Coffee was hot. I ordered the Country Benedict with turkey sausage, & wife ordered a Skillet. Regarding the Country Benedict, the sausage was extremely hard despite coming absolutely covered in sausage gravy. In fact, for the prices on this menu (ex. a Skillet is ~$20), this food lacked any real memorable flavors and did not arrive hot. A breakfast bill for two people was over $50! If I wanted such an expensive breakfast, there are many other better options (ex. Blue Door). My advice, either lower prices on the existing mediocre menu, OR keep the high prices, but reduce the overall menu to home runs that are worth it. tl;dr Mediocre breakfast not worth the price.

This place is amazing I love the servers we come here all the time! The food is fresh and served hot! There are so many options for food and drinks! Any combo you can think of they can make! This is just the fast diner option of blue door cafe I feel! So I'm excited it's in Kent! Thanks for gluten free options too but I wish desserts were gluten free tho :/

I've been here a few times for breakfast and my disgustingly huge appetite is always filled. I slurp and lick the gravy clean off my plate like a ferocious animal. I would say that I act like a rabid animal when it comes to this breakfast. I am a glutton.

The food is fine. The drinks are yummy.We ended up here because Blue Door closes on Mondays and Tuesdays. (Great days to make $0!)The food is fine, if a little too sugary. It's sort of a glorified ice cream stand. Their Fizzi Moo drinks are extravagant and full of sugar. They are yummy and fun, if a little overwhelming.The French toast options - battered and fried - are also a little overwhelming. They are large portions and it's a LOT of sweet.The eggs Benedict was delicious.But I'm here to talk about the way they pay their employees, and yes, I'm gonna bring the math.They boast their "No Tip" policy, which is the only one I've heard of in the entire state. The menu assures you that it is very important to the person in charge that their staff is paid fairly and not at the whims of the guests.They ensure this fair pay with higher prices on the dine in meals, consistent wages for the employees, and some type of equity profit sharing thing.Great. But we had a family of four and our bill was just over $100. With Fizzi Moo drinks all around, that puts us at $25 per person. That's a pretty standard cost of a meal. I sometimes spend more than that at Starbucks.If I were to tip on that, I'd tip $10, because $5 ain't shit.I was curious about their policy, so I asked what wage they pay their servers. I was told $10.75. And while I think I kept a straight face, I was shocked.$10.75 is only $.45 more than Ohio's minimum wage. And even if you think serving isn't a skilled position (you're wrong, it's all soft skills), it's still a labor intensive position. Most of the fast food places have the decency to offer $13 an hour, which is still a joke.Once you take away 20% for taxes (just over $2), the servers are now making $8.61/hr. That's $344.40 for a forty hour work week.The current average car payment is over $400. The average rent in Kent is $1,371. Phone bills are about $150. So we're at $480.25 per week and we haven't even hit groceries, insurance, or incidentals.The reason most people choose tipped jobs is because tipped positions tend to out pay wages by, A LOT.If a full time employee at Wild Goats is taking home less then $350 per week on their wages, then the equity would need to be somewhere around $1000 per staff member for it to make sense.The profit margins for restaurants is about 3%-5%. If we take away the $1.25 profit margin (that's at 5%, so I'm going high here), the meal for me was about $23.75. Now, that's incredibly low, so I can't imagine there is much more equity left. But let's say equity is a 10% up charge for dining in. So it's $2.37 per person at my table.We just didn't tip $9.48 on our meal, which is less than 10% of the overall cost of about $100. Standard tipping custom is 20%, but people like me are hip to how low that can be.But if we HAD stuck with a standard, our server would have made 100% more in tips. But my crew would've tipped %300 of my equity calculations.Now, you might know that tipped employees don't make a full wage. True. Their wages can be as low as 50% of the minimum wage. So at, say, $5.50 an hour with a $30 tip from me, this would've been $35.50 for our meal for that server.If my calculations are anywhere near correct, the no tip model has the server at $20.23, which is almost $15 less than want they could've made.$15 per table is gonna add up fast. A server can easily run 20 tables in a slow shift, so that would be $300 in lost income for ONE DAY.Look, all my numbers are imaginary. Maybe these servers are making a genuine living wage with great benefits.A living wage STARTS at $25/hr with FULL benefits.But I can't see how that would math out, so I'm begging Wild Goats to pay their servers more and write out some hard numbers with actual transparency on their menu inserts.

Wow this place while I like it keeps changing the menu and prices. Now the included tipping is gone. They are going to loose the college kids. Almost 17.00 bucks for breakfast? Pancakes and omelette are ridiculous ! Salad is close to $17.00 as well. You can go to Bob Evan's or almost any diner and get lower price. We don't want to not tip the servers bc they work their asses off but that's going to happen bc college kids aren't rolling in the dough. Lower your prices WG or they will go other places.

Food is absolutely amazing!! The craft drinks are a win with my kiddos and everyone is so friendly and courteous we absolutely love this place!

Had a great time kayaking on the Cuyahoga at Kent, including shooting the rapids, so I wanted to grab a quick lunch. I had looked at Wild Goats a couple of times and knew that on Wednesdays they have the Buck Buck special which is a bunch of breakfast items at $1-$2 each. Wild Goats is located on W. Main Street across from the Kent Free Library in a smallish free standing building. Was seated quickly and given the menus. With the Buck Buck menu I decided to get the 2 eggs over medium, a pancake and hashbrowns ($1 each) and an apple fritter ($2). The food came out in about 5 minutes, all fresh and nicely prepared. The eggs were good with just a bit of soft yolk, the hashbrowns nice and crispy the way I like them and instead of 1 pancake I got 2 with butter and syrup. The apple fritter was nice sized and clearly made in house. Every item were well prepared and just good basic breakfast food with nice sized portions. Overall Wild Goats provided a nice tasty meal at an incredible price. Service is good and quick, not a lot of decor, but a good place to grab a meal.

Menu is too large, too many choices to navigate. Items we ordered should have been simple and tasty, instead weird and disappointing and overpriced. Used to like Wild Goats, now not as good as food from Sheetz.

What happened to this place?, the prices!, tip / no tip what's going on. Quality of food doesn't even come close to the value . $3.50 for a standard coffee, $15 for a egg cheese bagel w/ 1/8 avocado and pico , no way!, won't be back. Definitely missing the mark for a college diner. I wondered way on a Sat am the parking lot was empty.