Carl's Jr. Hornby — Restaurant in Christchurch

The staff are friendly and do their best, but they seem to be perpetually under staffed, one or two people serving a large queue, and two chefs out back cooking, when I arrived i was third in the queue but it still took almost 5 minutes to be served, meanwhile the orders screen was steadily turning red (indicating 4mins), one table had been waiting 15 minutes for their order, their burgers could be seen in the warmer, but because both front staff were busy taking till and drive through orders the table waited another 3 or so minutes to receive, I've been waiting about 20 minutes now to get my meal, the screen now has 8 red orders ranging from me down to 8 minutes of wait time. Their specialty burgers are always fantastic, but the routine burgers can be a little mundane, fries always hot and crispy, this isn't a place to come for lunch if you don't have an hour up your sleeve... fast...

Grading on a fast food burger scale so it did well for my first try of Carl's Jr. It was a Saturday, lunchtime near a major road and the venue was way too quiet. The burgers had a nice smokey flavour to the meat. The condiments and other inclusions complimented the meat. The burger buns were a bit under cooked in flavour. Soft and fresh but just had an under cooked bread flavour. The fries (chips) were solid with skins on them. They were fluffy and yellow with average seasoning, a complimentary side for a burger. The restaurant was clean and comfortable. It was however struggling to keep the staff busy during a lunchtime rush? dawdle is probably more accurate. It was good value for money but it appears that Carls Jr is not thriving in Christchurch. That's what happens in a capitalist system...

Spent ages in the drive through, when we ordered the cashier repeated every aspect of the order over and over, I would say the burger, drink, and size I wanted all at the same time and the cashier would ask if I wanted it as a combo, then had to ask what drink I wanted, then had to ask what size I wanted.

This happened 3 times for all the meals we were getting. I can understand needing to have some details repeated but if I say exactly what I want all at once, you shouldn't need to ask step by step for the information I've already given.

To make matters worse when we got our food they had rung up one of the combos as a burger by itself, despite asking if it was a combo, and what drink I wanted with it, and what size... Seriously how does...