&pizza — Restaurant in Alexandria

This was my first time trying &pizza. The food was good. The service was pretty lackluster. Mostly the staff had been clearly overwhelmed and lacked good management and direction to prioritize items.

I placed an order at the Potomac Yard location in Alexandria, VA on 9/30/23. The order was placed at 8:40 pm. We arrived for pickup around 9pm.

The restaurant was quite backed up and there were multiple customers who had been waiting on orders for 30-40 minutes.

My order was on the "in progress" window when I had walked in and I could see what I believed to be my order coming out of the oven.

Shortly after arriving, my order disappeared from being in progress. Food was being boxed, orders were being taken at the counter, and other orders were getting corrected on the spot from having been made incorrectly or getting missed.

I waited for another 15 minutes without anyone ever engaging with me as a customer despite standing in line for pickup. I tried once to get an employees attention but the employee was busy trying to get orders boxed and likely didn't hear me trying to talk to him so I continued to wait.

After nearly half an hour, another employee came over to the oven and looked at two pizzas that had been sitting on the counter for quite some time, then quite literally tossed them into the bottom warmer.

Exasperated from the state of being overwhelmed that the store was in, the employee asked me my name and if I was waiting for a pickup. I gave him my name and he went back to the items he had just thrown into the warmer to give them to me along with the garlic knots I had ordered that had been in the top warmer.

Finally, after almost 40 minutes of being there and nearly and hour after placing the order, it was received. Fwiw, the food, after being reheated in my oven at home was quite delicious but the overall experience strongly discourages me from returning to the location or other &pizza locations when there are so many...

Pizza is phenomenal, but your location has a real smart a double s on the team. I’ll preface this by saying I am fully vaccinated, and this review is written after the mask mandates were lifted, but I’m happy to comply with individual store policies on masks for the few that still have them. Anyhow, I stopped by on a bike ride after ordering pizza ahead. I had no mask, didn’t realize I needed one, stepped in to pick up my pizza thinking I’d be in and out in 10 seconds. The young man in question hands me my pizza and I politely ask for a bag so I can carry it home on a bike. He rudely says “but you only have one item. Also you’re not wearing a mask so you’re gonna have to wait outside”. I step out as asked, explaining I need a bag to carry my pizza home. I wait outside thinking he’s getting a bag when in fact he had forgotten my drink. He returned with no bag and yet another rude explanation and a rude reminder to wear a mask next time. I explained my situation once more and he finally comes out with a bag. Now- was that so hard? I hope this team member gets some coaching. Can’t be fun having constant altercations with...

Not sure if this is a franchise location or a corporate location but what I can say is that their certainly is a lack of communication, hospitality, professionalism, a good attitude especially while working under pressure, and no training what so ever on how to handle/ properly handle customer objectives at this location, very distasteful. the fact that your staff is young is no excuse, it's a great thing but you could invest in at least training them properly or hire better staff/the right people. There was no ownership for the mistake made on your behalf you instead blamed the consumer after I was already inconvenienced due to the lack of communication and effort to work effectively as a team. Most importantly you Decided that it was okay to talk aloud amongst your teammates about how you personally feel when those feelings should have been left at home. Your attitude was poor because I had a request I was told could be fufilled by your team mate but yet apparently That was not true? Very Confusing, very alot of not good things which equals an overall bad service experience. I hope that you learn better...