My partner and I have been a fan of Carluccios for some time, we go we enjoy, we leave and they never hear from us until next time. They are reliably consistent, great fresh food, lots of vegetarian options and where ever you are, you never seen far from one on the high street or in a shopping mall.

Most brands are very good to you until something goes wrong and for me, how they respond when things get a bit messy is the true test for any company or brand.

We eat at Carluccios about once a month, we like the Vendure plate and the homemade Caponata and recently we had an experience where the food was excellent as usual but the service wasn't up to scratch even for laid back people like us.

We didn't make a fuss at the time, just paid the bill and left but it niggled me and when I got home I sent a calm and polite feedback email explaining what had happened.

The response I received was quick and made me feel amazing, like the company really cared we had not been looked after and couldn't do enough to make things right, no excuses or justification. The person writing the email sounded genuinely distressed like it was their own company that had let us down, the personal touch was incredible.

It is a lesson to every business how to turn an unhappy customer into one more loyal than they were before.

I genuinely got the feeling this company cared more about the fact I had cause to write to them than anything else and certainly money didn't come into it which makes me want to support the brand even more and help them grow.

I hope they treat their staff as well as they do their customers but that is clearly a given as the staff I dealt with in a crisis were used to making things right.

I am honestly so impressed with Carluccios especially in this current economy where it feels like I have to be really careful who I buy from just in case something goes wrong.