Jason's Deli — Restaurant in Austin

Before a few of weeks ago I had never heard of or been to a Jason's Deli, but now I have been 3x cuz I cannot get enough of their California Club on a croissant! Seriously, soooooo good and for less than $8 for the sandwich and a side, a heck of a deal because you can obviously tell the quality and freshness of the ingredients. My two previous experiences have been to place to-go orders and I haven't had to really wait that long in line or for my order.

So why the "2-stars" you may ask...well, the food is 5-star quality and the service 4+, but after my experience today picking up an online order, three stars got dropped for the inexplicability of being able to order and pay online (the ipad app was super quick and easy to use) and supposedly having a line specifically for Online and To-Go orders, but having me stand behind 4 people in line to place to-go orders when all I needed to do was pick up my online order (it had been bought and paid for) is absolute rage-inducing frustrating madness! To add to that when I asked the girl at the cashier as she was taking the 1st of said 4 to-go orders if this is where I pick up online orders (as in, just give me my food, why the hell am I going to stand and wait behind 4 people who are doing what I was trying to save time by doing online) she just says yes and continues to take the line lady's to-go order. So I go to an open cashier for the "seating" section and tell him I am in a hurry and just need to pick up my online order. He just blankly stares at me for a few secs before pointing to the other cashier line and saying "you pick that up over there". Seriously? You aren't doing anything, I just want the food I ordered and paid for 30mins ago, but you are going to send me to the line w/4 people in it instead of just getting me my damn order?! Needless to say, the girl cashier had the next lady in line wait while she came over to ask me what my name was. My order was literally sitting on the counter behind her.

All that precious time I attempted to save by ordering and paying online because I have a 30min lunch and in 5pm Arboretum traffic that is how long it takes me to get to JD and back to my office; I just wasted that time trying to pick up my order. What literally should have been a 2min interaction turned into a 10min ordeal and me being almost 10mins late coming back from lunch.

JD, let me suggest some improvements in the customer service experience here: first, have a line specifically designated for online pick up and maybe have those to-go orders placed at the same line as the sit down orders because if I wanted to wait in line or had the time to, I would not have ordered and paid online to begin with; second, train your employees to help rather than brush off customers, surely the person behind the "online/to-go" cashier is not the only person who can help me retrieve my online order as it was a bag w/my name on it sitting on a counter and not locked in a biometric passcode encrypted order pick up safe.

Needless to say, I will have to curb my cravings for the Cali Club for awhile as today's experience just left a bad taste...

First, the positive: I'm recovering from a car accident, and was looking for something warm, filling, and easy to eat. I tried the broccoli cheese soup for the first time. It was amazing, exactly what I needed, and frankly the best broccoli cheese soup I've ever had. It was the perfect consistency, and the broccoli was tender - not the woody parts that most restaurants add in to create volume. Worth every penny. The soup alone deserves five stars.

The not-so-positive is about the changes in the deli over the past year or so. I understand and have no problem with the measures taken to protect employees and patrons from the pandemic (which is still going on, with a new strain that is not covered by the vaccines currently available, despite a significant portion of the local population pretending otherwise). But I am disappointed that the deli seems to be using the situation as an excuse to increase prices on items that don't cost them more than they did 2 years ago. No more unlimited salad bar. Sure, there are obvious problems keeping that area safe. They already have set types of salads, so that's fine. But now they're overcharging outrageously for items that were on the salad bar. Example: if I ate at the deli, paying for the bar, I could add as many little cornbread muffins to my plate as I wanted. Now, they charge $1.39 for 4 of them. For years, they had no problem with a customer having a dozen muffins included with the rest of the items on the salad bar, and it didn't bankrupt them then. Now, suddenly muffins are so much more expensive to make? Just seems like they jumped on the opportunity to do a bit of...

Sandwiches, salad bar consistently good; beverage area not kept clean; most tables needed to be bused. Overall: Dirty restaurant. They were way behind on busing, which led me to be even more irritated when the bus person came by to pick up empty dishes and reached over my plate - for my salad bowl - and grabbed it, even though I held my hand over it and moved another dish to the edge of the table for her to take. I was not finished with my salad. She then put the salad bowl back in front of me rather than offer a clean one. She had dirty hands from handling other peoples dirty dishes - totally gross! I settled down and, as I put the last bite of sandwich in my mouth, I looked down to see a hand on my plate, looked up and was asked, "Are you finished?" Rude. All of a sudden everyone was in a big hurry to bus tables as patrons were trying to enjoy their meals. When I expressed my irritation, my finance' and I were offered cookies for the unpleasant experiences. The employee never brought them to us. What a huge disappointment dining at Jason's has become. All stores are dirtier than they used to be; the bathrooms: disgusting; and according to the person who never brought us the complimentary cookies, hardly anyone speaks English, so the mistakes should be tolerated. I think not! Over-priced sandwiches, dirty dining areas, dirty beverage area, employees hanging out at the salad bar having conversations with their friends - interrupting the flow of access to the salad bar, dirty tables - only one booth had been cleaned when we were ready to sit down. At least 10 were dirty. Standards seem to be much lower than...