Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen — Restaurant in Athens

We had tried to visit this Popeye's location several times in the last year, but the dining room was closed every time. We found it to be open recently and decided to give it a try. I have had wonderful meals in Popeye's restaurants in Cleveland, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Enterprise, Alabama. However, I was not so fortunate in this Athens, Alabama location. Their sign by the highway advertised their chilled lemonade, but the machine for that was empty and unplugged. The ice dispenser on their soda machine in the dining area wasn't working. Though we had seen an employee wiping tables when we came in, there were still food remnants under tables and on benches. Vents and ceiling tiles in the dining area are covered in black mold. We were the only customers dining in, but they seemed to be having trouble keeping up with the demand for chicken at the drive through. The young man frying chicken seemed to be doing it carefully and well, but the shelves of available product were nearly empty. It appeared that he just couldn't keep up by himself. They had no butterfly shrimp so I ordered popcorn shrimp. As we ate, an advertisement played on their sound system and raved about their quarter pound of popcorn shrimp that would be "the best you've ever had!" My order certainly didn't measure up. Half of it was made up of hard, inedible chunks. The rest was just texture with no flavor. Though the ratio of rice to beans was perfect, the red beans and rice (normally my favorite part of the meal) tasted terrible. The only bright spot was my husband's chicken sandwich. He said that it was tasty and well prepared, and he liked the bun. On the other hand, he didn't finish his homestyle mac n cheese because he said it wasn't very good. This was also the first time we've ever gotten bad biscuits at Popeye's. They were cold and dry. The young man running the front counter was doing his best and was very personable. He got ice for us and he apologized for how long it took to get our food. He was very gracious, but he also had to apologize to a lady who came inside because she had been waiting awhile for her drive through order, and to another lady who was placing her order inside but would have to wait because there was no chicken available on the shelves. Is it poor management? Is there no one to supervise locations to monitor the decline? Did Covid take its toll and they just can't recover? I don't know, but we won't return...

I’m a Doordasher sometimes and I walked in to grab a customer‘s order and I said I’m here for that order and there was some short white girl in a hat that was very rude. she looked a little oldish maybe 50 I don’t even really know but she was so rude. She said good, I said to her yeah, good I know the customer is probably hungry. she said well it’s been here long time and I said well how long and she says about 30 minutes I said well they sent us on another Doordash for the same woman so I could only get here just now and I took the order and I left when I walked outside, There’s another woman who was outside sweeping She was super awesome and she was asking us about a song that was playing in our car and we spoke to her Popeyes in athens on 72 needs more women or people rather that are like the woman we encountered in the parking lot having to do the sweeping then the woman behind the counter that was rudeand it was completely out of line. I feel 100% that people should not be in Customer Service if they don’t have any Customer Service skills. Put that ride A person or in the heat in the parking lot and give that nice back woman we spoke to a manager position and raise. As if Popeyes ever has orders ready to begin with on the first place. That 3.8 star rating speaks volumes but again that sweet black woman that was sweeping the parking lot as a manager and then have her teach the other people how they’re supposed to act and how to do proper customer service. Thank you for reading all of my review and listening to me rant about it. Have a...

26 minutes trapped in the drive through lane is ridiculous. I realize a big order was the cause but Popeyes you need to have those people park and special cook their order when it is 6 PM. Serve the rest of your customers. The clue should be when the cars are wrapped around the building. Then it would not kill your staff to apologize for the long wait and to also get the order right. Otherwise the food is usually good.

Update: This place continues to miss the boat. The food remains pretty good but do not expect much when it comes to service or getting things right. The prices continue to just climb while the service declines. It should not be too hard to fill an order with spicy chicken when that is ordered and not the regular chicken. It should not be too hard to put the right number of pieces of chicken in the order. And it really should be routine to put the freaking biscuit in the box with a combo order. What really should be easy if for the owner to get his/her act together and get this place back on track. If the current employees cannot handle the job fire them and hire some who can. Nearly $15 for a four piece combo meal, I expect it...