Joseph B.
Google
This was an absolutely wretched experience. We hadn't been to an Applebee's in some time thanks to a poor experience, but we decided to give it a try again. That was a mistake. Firstly though, let me say the hostess was great. Friendly, amenable, and willing to help. Thanks to her, after we had sat for 15 minutes waiting for someone to even come take our drink order ( please note it was a slow Wednesday evening ) -she- went back to fetch our waiter. He proceeded to lie and say he had been stuck in the back. The truth was, we had seen him dealing with another table multiple times while we sat there. Now... we were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he hadn't known we were his table, but the blatant lie was bad.
After we finally order our drinks and an appetizer (pictured) its another good 10 minutes before someone (who I can only imagine was the manager) brings out our appetizer and asks if we're doing okay. My wife makes it clear that we're not enjoying our visit but just asks if we can have the drinks we ordered. He goes off to the back and after another 5 minutes or so the waiter comes back with the drinks finally and then launches into their charity speech. They were doing something like 'buy a vet a beer'. Normally totally okay with this sort of thing, but maybe not when it took 30 minutes to get our drinks. The whole thing just felt awkward and forced and like he didn't want to be there. He then promptly leaves without taking our meal order.
We wait another 10 or so and then decide its time to go. When he finally arrived, not to ask us what we wanted to eat, but to see if my kiddo wanted another shirly temple, we asked for the check, paid, and left. He got a tip, but not anything like we normally tip.
Other notes:
The Food. We never tried anything but the appetizer and while it was warm, it was not good. Not sure if thats normal for that dish, but my kid who loves spinach dip wouldn't touch it after the first bite.
The Manager. I might be wrong and maybe he was a different waiter who was helping out and never seen again, but I doubt it. But of that was the manager... he knew we were unhappy with the service and clearly could not find a care in his body to care about our experience. Even when we were obviously upset and leaving early, there was zero effort on either of their parts to try and salvage any sort of customer experience. If not for our hostess, it would have been easily the worst dining experience I have had in over 15 years.
0/10, won't be going to Applebee's again.
