Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Alton

My mom, brother, sister, nieces and I decided to eat lunch here after attending a funeral. It was 1/11/25, a little after 1pm on a Saturday afternoon. There was no wait, so the 6 of us were very promptly seated at the corner booth to the far left of the entryway, given menus, and advised that our server would be right with us. When she arrived, she was younger girl in her late teens/very early 20s, blonde, very friendly and greeted us, took our drink order and asked if we'd like appetizers. We declined the appetizers and told her we'd need a few minutes to look over the menu. She'd brought our drinks and checked back twice before we placed our order. As it was still lunch, most of us ordered chicken sandwiches, with one ordering a burger, another ordering a club sandwich, and another just ordering a side of fries. Roughly 15 minutes after we'd ordered, our waitress came back to the table and said she'd forgotten which chicken sandwich I'd ordered and asked me to repeat my order, so I did. Again, this was 15 minutes AFTER we'd all ordered. Five of the six of us have worked as servers at one point or another, so the fact that she was just then putting in our order was a real disappointment. She was, however, diligent about keeping our drinks full until we got our food. When our food finally arrived about 20 minutes after the order clarification, it was served by two other young ladies, neither of which was our server. When they handed me my plate, I noticed there were only 5 waffle fries on my plate and no queso (I ordered a cup of queso to dip my fries in). I looked around at everyone else's plates and saw that they all had several more fries/waffle fries than me, so I asked, "Excuse me, but is this all the fries I get?" This girl stands there and says, um, well, I think so, yes. She's looking at everyone else's plates, too, yet still proceeds to tell me that, "they're measured by weight, so you only get 6oz." She watches me look at everyone else's plates again and back at mine and, at this point, we're all laughing because it's so blatantly obvious that I got totally ripped off on fries. My brother and sister are making statements like, "Obviously, you've got your 6oz and our fries are just overachievers trying to look like more on our plates while yours are clearly hiding," and "umm...I'm not even sure how you think 12 is more than 5." The girl says she sorry, but again, it's measured by weight. If I'd like more, she can put in a side order for me. I passed on the side order. Our server appeared as soon as the young ladies who brought our food walked away. We asked her for silverware since we had never been given any, napkins, 2 sides of ranch dressing and me and my mom's cups of queso, all of which had been requested when our orders were placed, but were not brought with our food. The waitress brought my queso and forgot everything else. We asked for the other items again. This time she brought the two sides of ranch and nothing else. I shared my queso with my mom since I ended up with a rectangular bowl full -- way more than the ramekin full that I'd asked for, and we asked yet again for the silverware and napkins and requested she take the other queso she never brought off the check. She brought us 2 rolls of silverware for a table of 6 and no napkins. I went to the bathroom after a few minutes and grabbed napkins from there because our server either had absolutely horrible short term memory, really enjoyed running herself to death, or doesn't care to understand the concept of efficiency. I will say that the crispy cheddar and bacon chicken sandwich was very good, but I would've liked to have had more than 5 fries. Not cool, Applebee's. Y'all are getting...

I'm gonna start this story off by saying I've worked in the food industry for over 6 years. So anytime I go to a restaurant I am pretty relaxed, because there's always something going on in the back of the house that could be causing issues, and since I am well acquainted I am easy going.

That's being said, every single time I have ever gone to this particular applebee's there are always issues. The turn over rate on their employees is insane, literally every time I have gone here the serving staff has been awful. I've never got just my drink alone in under 15 minutes. They always say they hired a bunch of new servers so it's kind of hectic. Okay, that's fair. And maybe I just always get a new server, but it's still fair to say it sucks when you have been there 3 or 4 times over the course of about 2 months and got the same issue.

Next, the food is always cold. Granted, once you get all the issues taken care of the food is fine. I've never personally had bad food, however on at least 3 occasions other people I was with had all had errors on their orders. One of which the waiter at the time tried to argued with us about it.

Also on a few occasions you can literally watch the wait staff run into each other and drop everything, I've seen it twice and it's great entertainment, especially when it's your food.

Speaking of that, on one of the occasions it did take an hour+ to get our food. And they played the new cook card when we asked about why it was taking so long. So I guess I get new cooks all the time to. I have bad luck.

I've asked to talk to managers twice due to various issues, and I will say they are really good about working with you and getting you taken care of, it's almost as if they know their store seems to be a train wreck on all fronts. But there is that.

If you're in the area and planning on eating here, just go to the Wood River location. It's much...

I went to Applebee's with my family for my birthday this year because I heard they have fun drinks for someone turning 22, I was intrigued. It was a change from my usual chips, salsa, and margaritas. I legitimately came just for the drinks. When I tried to order, I realized I forgot my ID, blaming it on my heat-induced brain fog from the State Fair. Amanda, our server, suggested I just have water, which I was planning to order anyway, but I felt a bit of animosity after she said that. No biggie, though, a family member who wasn't with us brought my ID.

Amanda finally came back after serving our food to take my drink order but then proceeded to check my ID for over a minute. I'm presuming it was because she thought I was either turning 21 or that it was fake. As someone who also serves and has to check IDs, I know that 2004 is the generation turning 21, not 2003. So, I don’t see how it would take her more than 10 seconds to realize I’m a year older than 21. She even held it up to the light to see if the state outline was there, so now I know she was checking if it was fake. At an Applebee's, seriously? Maybe at Bon Air, but not for these mediocre drinks and with both my parents their yikes.

Also, my shark drink had only one gummy, and it was lips? What? And just one? She also didn’t check on us as much as the table next to us. The appetizer came out with our food, and we didn’t get small plates for it. She also complained about how other customers complained, which tells me she knows she works in a not-so-great establishment. That’s probably why she acts like that; my parents experienced something similar with her just last week. She’s one of the main servers and isn’t any better than the rest, even those who have probably been there less time than she has. I was also told she’s a manager, so thanks for a mediocre birthday. She didn’t even wish me a...