Bill B.
Yelp
This Taco Bell opened just under a month ago and it would seem they're still in their growing pains phase. I've gone exactly once a week for three weeks and every time I went, there were problems.
For starters, the design of the area for what goes where is just a disaster. Granted, they probably don't have a lot of room to work with, so I'm trying not to criticize this too much, but the prep area is enormous and is right smack dab in the middle of the "restaurant," which forces waiting customers to bottleneck themselves to the left if they're waiting in line.
Not a huge deal, but they also put a self-serve screen kiosk in the middle of the action as well, so you have clusters of people waiting for their food, clusters of people waiting to use the self-service kiosk, and a jumbled line of people waiting in the main line to order... and we're ALL in each other's way.
And because they're still a fairly new presence in this part of Boston, it's packed with customers. So, imagine how awesome it was this past Monday (October 7, 2019) when their A/C wasn't working, the place is packed (again) and their soda machine isn't working, leaving customers to get either a bottle of water, a Diet Pepsi, or a slushie.
I went with the Diet Pepsi, which they gave to me in a can... and there was a small lump of frozen slush at the bottom of my can of Diet Pepsi, leaving ME to believe perhaps they accidentally re-routed all the cold from the A/C to whatever fridge is keeping these cans cold. Again, not a huge deal in and of itself, but when you consider the size of the cups they give you when you order a numbered value meal, one can of Diet Pepsi would fill about HALF of one of those cups, so when I went to get a second can later in my meal, the cashier charged me like $2.75 for it when she should have just given it to me free of charge.
After all, it's not MY fault your soda machine broke down less than a month in... and when I got THAT can, about half of THAT was filled with frozen slush. That was my most recent visit. The visit before that, the self-serve kiosk was out of order and they were severely understaffed so they were getting slammed. The woman who I'm guessing was the manager was helping the other two folks get the food ready, but one of the customers in front of me started complaining about the wait. The manager wasn't rude to her, but it was pretty clear she just did NOT give a crap that they were crawling through food orders.
Lastly, of the three times I've gone there, they've managed to screw up my order twice. The first time, they forgot the crunchy taco that accompanies the quesadilla meal and the second time, they put sour cream in my 5-layer beef burrito after I very politely and clearly asked the cashier to please omit the sour cream.
They're very close to where I work so I won't give up on them yet, and I know they're all still very new, but good grief, they really gotta get their sh*t together. Maybe get a handful of stellar Taco Bell employees from other locations to temporarily commute to their 76 Summer Street location to get the newbs shaped up and flying right as a sort of hands-on training process?
