Popeyes Louisiana Chicken — Restaurant in Reading

My first experience of Popeyes. I’ve been wanting to try it for a while, I found myself in Reading so figured I’d treat myself!! It’s a big unit with a large high-street presence, you can’t really miss it with the large orange banner. On entering the restaurant it was pretty empty due to it being just before lunch time (I’d had no breakfast!!), I used a self-serve screen to look through the menu which was smooth with no draggy. A simple menu to chose from, I went for 5-piece spicy chicken with coke and Cajun fries, a ranch dip plus I added an extra dip as keen to try the hot one whilst there. It came to about £11, which to be honest is more than I would expect to pay. I think around £8/9 would be more acceptable.

Loads of seats to chose from, I placed my number on the table and only had a short wait before a female staff member brought over my meal on a tray. She looked bored and like she didn’t want to be there to be honest, muttered something as she placed my food down.

The actual chicken itself was nice and tender, I can’t fault it at all really. I would imagine their claim of preparation is accurate. Seemed very fresh. The batter/coating is not to my taste, personally. I felt it didn’t have any real flavour, texture was indifferent. Also too much/too thick. I’d ordered spicy but didn’t even notice that, I was glad to have the dips as otherwise it would of been a very bland meal. The hot dip really is hot 🥵 so unless you’re used to that I’d deffo have a cool dip along side it. The Cajun chips were ok, by far not the best I’ve had of this style. In fact I’d say they were a little on the warm side rather than hot when served, which isn’t ideal.

The restaurant itself seemed very clean and well presented, as were the toilets.

Would I go back? Hmmm 🤔,...

Extremely poor customer service and UNHYGIENIC practices. Poor service particularly from the manager. The self-serve kiosk wasn't working so we went to order at the front til. Our order was inputted incorrectly by the staff member (we didn't know) and then the food itself took 30 minutes to come to us - we were never given a reason or even told. We realised they gave us the wrong order when it finally came, so had to wait another 10 mins for the correct one. It wasn't even busy! The manager didnt even apologise or offer us anything to compensate us for this slow food at a fast food chain! I fed back to her that it's unacceptable for us to be waiting 40 mins and she replied with "what can i do?". It's pretty pathetic. The food itself is bland and is nothing like how Southern USA chicken should be. The crust on the chicken is very thick and has absorbed a lot of oil, it's just a horrible bland greasy piece of chicken. The burgers are a rip-off - they charge you to add cheese, pickles, etc, and give you a minuscule amount, it's like there was nothing added. The tables are wiped but with the SAME cloth they use to wipe the trays they serve to customers. It's disgusting and unhygienic - they literally wipe the trays at the bin areas and then return them to the person at the front who uses it to serve food to the next customer. It's so gross I will not ever be...

I had a really disappointing and absolutely unhygienic experience at this location. The biggest problem is that none of the staff wear gloves while preparing food. On top of that, I saw employees using their phones and then going straight back to handling food without washing their hands. That is completely unacceptable and disgusting.

It only got worse from there. One of the workers dropped the bag meant for my order on the floor. Instead of throwing it away and using a clean bag like any professional place should, he picked it up and still put my food in it. When preparing my wrap, the employee ripped the tortilla — I assumed they would replace it, but no, they just wrapped it up and served it to me anyway.

To top it all off, I noticed one employee with a runny nose who wasn’t wearing a mask. He grabbed a tissue and blew his nose right there, but never once washed his hands before going back to work. Watching that was enough to completely kill my appetite and my trust in this place.

This location clearly does not care about hygiene or food safety. No gloves, no handwashing, serving food in bags that hit the floor, giving out ripped tortillas, and even sick staff handling food without proper hygiene — it’s beyond careless, it’s disgusting. I will never eat here again, and I strongly warn other customers to avoid this place if you value...