Carl's Jr. Clayton — Restaurant in Melbourne

Third visit to a Carl's Jr, and probably my last I'm afraid. Very first visit was years ago to the first store opened in Australia, in Queensland. Burgers etc Ok, Coffee dreadful.

This visit, our 3rd to an Australian Carl's Jr, was on a Friday, mid afternoon, very quiet and not busy at all. and our 2nd visit to this particular store. New looking restaurant that seems to have a "coldness" about it, rather than a warm welcoming feel. I think this could be from the open warehouse style ceilings and industrial style lighting. Staff were friendly and helpful, service was fast, WAY too fast I think this time.

We ordered 3 meals again, went to the drink dispenser and our meals were already on the table!

Order placed at 3:44pm, food was ALREADY on the table at 3:47pm when I photographed it!!!! Times are on the receipt and photo metadata. Quick, friendly service is great.....but not at the expense of food quality! It takes longer than 3 minutes to freshly cook, assemble the burgers, collate the meal and deliver to the table! Obviously these were premade sometime before and hence the poor experience. A real shame.

Burgers were fine, but not fresh, the patties were barely lukewarm, sauces and salads were tasty and obviously fresh. Chips and waffle fries were also bareley lukewarm and not really crispy. Advertised as Chargrilled, but I didn't get that chargrill flavour I expected, like at a Hungry Jacks or Grill'd. I really liked the obviously fresh lettuce, tomatoes and onion on my tropical Angus. The chicken burger was the best of the 3 burgers we had. Really liked the bottomless self serve soft drinks. Toilets were spotless, unlike last time. This is the 3rd time we've been disappointed overall. So a bit of a disappointment overall, especially for the relatively high price. If freshly made was a priority and consistency could be maintained, their product would...

Overall very below average experience...

Visited the store on 7/02/24 arvo

I got high expectations from my local Carl's and felt like having a quick small meal and checked my app which was showing a glowing deal, which when trying to place an order was taking longer than usual...Tried showing this to the make attendant at the time who outrightly unapologetically refused than even trying to help or offer any assistance.

Lucky me, the deal got through and what was refused got through with ease and unwillingly the male attendant had to process my order on his system. More alarmingly the restaurant wasn't busy ,yet the server didn't ask if I prefer to have it here or do takeaway, nor was told how long it will take.

Waited for about 10 and as I was already sitting in the front, sipping my drink, in-comes my same male server with the food who just dropped it on my table and went away....I was a bit zabbed by that but still wanted to enjoy my meal....To what was more interesting is that same server was handling over food to other waiting people and was serving it with a smile and saying enjoy your meal etc.....This made me wonder what did I do wrong by ordering the food.....

Clearly this staff has more bias than any other server.....The point of this review is for the management to prevent this kind of experience to other customers and ensure that staff should be free from any sort of bias....I wanted to ignore the fact that same male server was more interested in checking his phone while I was talking to him initially about my order .... Clearly the store management is okay with this and hence...

All I wanted was a basic Burger meal. Simple you would think. With only 2-3 other customer's in the store and two out front serving and two in back making the food, you would think it would be a breeze - 5 or some minutes are we're out of the store.

35 minutes later and we are still waiting. A couple after us were served and received their meal (Yay for them). Cars going through the drive-away where getting their orders filled. Yet our ONE Burger simply could not be made in a decent amount of time. Do you think the font servers would say something to us, apologise, make eye contact, even joke with us (humour can work sometimes).... Nope. Nothing. The worst customer service I've ever had from a fast food outlet- it makes Maccas and Jacks look like premium stuff compared to Car Jrs in Clayton (Tues 7 May 2024).

So at 40 minute's, and they KNEW that we where waiting, we kindly asked for a refund and just left. Why communicate with them if they couldn't be bothered to communicate with us.

To Management: Get rid of these "Customer Service" hacks and grab yourself some MacDonalds staff - they know what they're doing. They are well trainded. Yours are not. They sloppy, have no feel for customer service, and seem to not care what happens to our experience. There appeared to be no floe to their process. The opened up bags, left them there, they didn't even know when burgers came down the shute. One said "There's a burger here" like it was a wonderful delight and surprise. No it wasn't.

To potential customers - just don't bother...