Cook Out — Restaurant in Asheville

I'm incredibly frustrated with both Asheville cookout locations. I've had the same experience at both the tunnel road location and the patton ave location. I typically end up going to cookout because either nothing else that has a drive thru is open or because I'm craving cookout. I typically go between the hours of 10pm and 3am. I eat there frequently, typically at least once a week.

I know the pandemic has hit fast food companies hard resulting in short staffing, exhausted employees, and supply chain shortages.

I don't blame the employees at all for my experiences at these cook out locations, the responsibility lies with management and corporate.

Now, my complaint. I've experienced this in more than half of my visits in the last two months. If you don't have enough staff to run two drive thru lines, close one of them. I am so incredibly sick of arriving at cookout, and there are three people in the secondary drive thru, and six or seven in the primary drive thru. I follow the sign and use the shorter lane for faster service. Only to sit in the secondary lane motionless while the primary lane moves steadily.

Tonight I went to the patton ave location. I arrived in line at 10:43pm. I was in the secondary lane. There were three vehicles in front of me including the one at the window. I placed my order for one cookout tray at 10:59pm(Order number 2217). I received my order at 11:41pm. The other line moved rapidly and steadily the entire time I was there. I would estimate that maybe 25-30 vehicles moved through the primary lane while I waited over SIXTY MINUTES, for THREE VEHICLES. That's 20 minutes per vehicle in the secondary lane. And there is no way out of the drive thru except through because someone inevitably blocks you from behind.

When i did finally receive my food the cheese bites were cold, the fries were soggy, and the burger bun was soggy.

If this were a first, second, or even third time occurrence I would give you a pass. I did give you a pass, several of them in fact. But the fact that this has happened at least four times at each location in the past two months tells me that it isn't an employee problem.

Close the secondary lane unless you are staffed to run it properly. I'm tired of wasting my time waiting on...

I give this place a 1 star, the food 3 stars- alright for a late night snack, the service 1 star because 07/18/24 1 AM in the morning i ordered 2 cheese burger plates and the “manager” that was working at the time was being extremely unprofessional and rude to us the first 30 seconds of being there we messed up the order and she said “maybe if you can’t order for yourself you can get someone else to do it for you or you can get out of my line” I feel like as a manager you should have more patience and kindness towards your customers because your a leader and a figure of power. If I was in this situation Id have been able to control and protect my staff from this situation. But unfortunately I think this manager couldn’t have taken this situation any worse. Cursing and being rude towards customers is never the answer. And at the end of it she told us to go ahead and dine at one of your competitors “Taco Bell” if we had a problem with the service. And the atmosphere this place gives is a solid 1 star because there are so many homeless people walking around, the line is completely horribly designed. This store needs to be looked at harder...

Due to COVID-19 complications this particular Cookout has become drive-thru only, which isn't a big deal. The problem is, is that the drive-thru setup ALONE makes me want to give this place 1-2 stars. A few staff members have been somewhat polite, so I'm giving them 2 stars, HOWEVER, I would recommend going to a different location for a couple of reasons. As previously mentioned, the drive-thru setup is confusing and irritating. There are two lanes, which is typical for cookout, except they're on the same side of the building which causes huge hold ups. Additionally, people. . . just get out of their cars and. . .walk around the drive-thru? I shoudl mention there's no outdoor seating at this location so people are just standing around in the drive-thru. Last but not least, staff is serverely overworked, and it's obvious by their interactions with customers. These are difficult times, so I feel bad complaining about lack of quality customer service, but I've been yelled at / to on a handful of occasions. If I were you, give these tired people a break and go to Taco Bell or something else; it's not worth your time to go to...