Karl A.
Yelp
My fiancé and I recently moved back to Fishtown after having been away 5 or 6 years, in which time this Nifty went up. We both have fond memories of the place going back to childhood, have had food from their South Philly and Northeast locations an odd time here and there as adults. We ordered takeout from the Fishtown location Saturday and it was a rough experience.
Don't get me wrong - I know there's a ceiling for how good Nifty Fifty's is ever going to be (not saying it can't hit the spot if you're in the right mood), and I expected they would be busy on a Saturday evening. But none of that prepared me for just how poorly it was functioning that night.
We ordered through their website's service and were pleasantly surprised when it told us the meal would be ready in something like 10 or 15 minutes. It was surprising, yes, but we'd put in pretty simple orders; I got a double Texas Ringer and fries, she got a single cheeseburger and cheese fries, plus a soda. It seemed possible that if they were churning out orders in a good groove at that point, our order could have been easy enough to get out in that estimated timeframe.
You can probably piece together by this point that that was not the case. We walked over around the time it should have been ready if the estimate had been accurate and told them the order name. We were told then that it was waiting for fries and would be ready then. So we sat down and waited...and watched as new people came in, a number of whom placed their orders after us and received them long before. Three buckets of fries were placed on the line for packaging...and sat there for twenty minutes. Another customer expressed frustration to us that made it sound like he was getting similar treatment. Long story short, we waited just short of an hour for the small, simple order - about 40 minutes longer than projected, during all of which, the burgers were sitting bagged under the heat lamp by the register. There was clearly nobody calling the shots in the kitchen or at the register, because the place was NOT understaffed, it was just poorly run, with no concern for customer experience.
If the time we were given when we ordered had been something like "40 - 50 minutes" we would have either chosen another restaurant (it's not exactly hard to get a hamburger and fries along Aramingo) or been at peace with waiting that long when we ordered. But instead, it told us the time that it really should have taken; the staff just wasn't up to the task of making good on that. Instead, they were perhaps genuinely lacking fries when our burgers came up and they simply proceeded to forget about us and our order despite us being seated in plain view and asking twice about the order. And the employee at the register? She could not have been colder or less conciliatory if you had told her that her exclusive job for the night was coming across as disconnected and unconcerned.
Anyway, the order finally was called and wouldn't you know it - they had forgotten the soda! Naturally, the burgers were room temperature by the time we received them. Sorry Nifty Fifties Fishtown, one experience ordering from you was more than enough.
