Whataburger — Restaurant in Austin

On February 16th, during our Texas winter apocalypse, I found myself without electricity or food. I called and drove past restaurants only to find everything closed. In a last ditch effort to search for groceries, I saw a long line into the street for the drive thru of the MLK Whataburger. I have never eaten at Whataburger. I parked and walked across ice, slush and snow to order inside the restaurant. There were at least 25 people waiting ahead of me to collect their food orders. I was discouraged but slowly approached the counter. Then I was greeted by Jessie Kring, the kind store manager smiling behind his face mask, patiently explaining to me they were running a little behind with online and drive thru orders. He told me the wait would be an hour . I was so grateful his staff opened his store to serve a very hungry and desperate community. Just when I attributed Jessie’s positive attitude to being a manager, I met Ryan. Ryan was equally friendly. I asked how he was doing today. He said quite tired as he didn’t sleep the night before, but still decided to work the shift. As I navigated the Whataburger menu for the first time, Ryan took my large complicated order, explained the soda lines were frozen and smiled behind his face mask as he handed me my ticket. For 1.5 hrs I waited and witnessed Jessie and Ryan manage the influx of customers inquiring about their orders, as well as behind the scenes employees knocking out food orders calmly and gracefully. I was so impressed as I saw Jessie and Ryan continuously serve customers with patience and kindness as if they were the first customer of the day. When I collected the food I was once again offered an apology for the wait .I was compelled to write a review to acknowledge the effort this store and staff made during a state of emergency to provide food and excellent service to its customers. I am so grateful that they were open and so humbled by how they treated others when they themselves must have been overwhelmed and exhausted. Well done store 162, you really made an impression in spite of difficult circumstances...

I'm a huge whataburger fan and this is the worst one I've ever been to, it consistently falls below their standard for quality, service, availability, and timeliness. A few bad hires can't cause the problems this location has, the rot has to start at management.

Everyone is rude and no matter if it's the dinner or late night shift you will recieve bad service at the window. Nothing is ever available but burgers and this is probably because the staffing is so bad that they can't serve anything but burgers in under 20 minutes, if it's not that then management is clearly the only person to blame here. I've come here and had them not have chicken strips, onion rings, spicy ketchup, shakes, and im sure anything else I would have asked for.

They have forgotten my food at the window while it was prepared for over 12 minutes while employees handled other duties, and im not one to Crack the whip at service workers but it isn't that hard to hand someone their food while it's still hot, I see the bag sitting there and I got places to go man!

I've also had food prepared wrong, to the point where it's a health hazard. Overcooked brown chicken that isnt fun to eat, as well as undercooked chicken. Chicken strips are a dangerous order here!

Avoid this location at all costs. If you eat whataburger for the first time here you will ruin the joy of...

Bought 2 large fries and a double jr with no bun. Fries were stale and double was made wrong. When getting rung in the order was 10.22, the guy who came up to the front register couldn't get the order to go though and got help from someone in a black shirt and he changed the order from a meal to a la carte making it 12.04. We payed and moved on then waited around 15-20 mins after finally getting our food the burger was made wrong and there wasn't sauces for both the fries and burger we asked for . We asked for them and the guy on register gave us two ketchup containers and said if we give you anymore ketchup we'll have to charge you for it. I said large fries get two per order as standard because I've worked over two years at Whataburger, he goes on about how "standard has changed" after being someone in a team-lead shirt who struggled to put in a double jr with 2 fries for 4-5 minutes[multiple times entering in the wrong sides]. After asking if there was someone we could talk to about it he ignores the question, helps someone else at counter then cycles back to finally get the sauces for the burger, still not giving any other sauces for the two large fries.

This is my second bad experience at this location, that being said this experience killed the vibe of my night and I likely won't...