Sonic Drive-In — Restaurant in Bonney Lake

UPDATE:

After I contacted corporate HQ regarding my experience the other day, the manager at the Bonney Lake Sonic called me (within a day of my visit). She apologized and told me they were extremely short staffed that day (I'd already guessed that was the issue). They offered a gift card if I was willing to come back, which was a nice gesture. I'll give it another try and hope my next experience is better.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Here's yet another one-star review that I'm pained to write, since I do love Sonic. It's still a relatively young/new restaurant chain here in the Pacific Northwest, and I want them to do well so that more locations open up in this area. That said, my visit today was so abysmal, I can't in good conscience give anything but the worst grade possible.

I arrived at the drive-thru (rather than a stall) at around 12:20 pm today, after a 25 minute drive from my workplace. My lunchtime is limited, so I actually have to work later than usual if I want Sonic, since it's quite a drive for me.

So anyway, 12:20 pm, prime lunch hour, and I was the second car behind a black sedan with young man waiting. I don't know how long he'd been there before I pulled up, but after waiting about a minute, I pulled up a crossword puzzle on my phone and started doing that. The crossword took me 6 minutes to complete, so at that point, I'd been in the drive-thru without ordering for 7 minutes.

Sometime closer to the tail end of that 7 minute period, the server came across the menu board speaker and apologized to the guy in the car in front of me - "I'm sorry for the wait. Could you give me just 1 more minute please?" Wow. Guy says no problem. I might have said something different. At that point though, there was still a way for Sonic to salvage the visit for both the guy in front of me and for me, but here's the thing...it wasn't just a minute wait after that. It was more like another 5 minutes.

Guy in front of me finally got impatient, cursed at the speaker box, gunned his engine and laid down some rubber hauling butt out of there. I pulled up to the menu board, at least a full 10-plus minutes from the time I first got there. The servers inside must have realized that people were getting hangry in the drive-thru line, because as soon as I pulled up, the server told me via the menu board speaker to order when ready .

First thing I order - onion rings. The server said something like, "Oh, I'm sorry, but we don't have the onion rings made for the day yet." Excuse me, WHAT? It's 12:20 pm and there are foods that haven't yet been prepped for the day?

That was really the last straw for me, at least for this location.

I had to spend more time away from work going somewhere else for lunch, because I just gave up after that.

Here's another thing. There are COPIOUS choices for burgers in Bonney Lake. The fast food choices are more reasonably priced than Sonic - BK, McDonalds, and A&W are all cheaper choices. There are also plenty of sit-down restaurants - Red Robin, Hopjacks, Burche, just to name a few. Hell, I could probably even get a tavern double at RR for less than a combo with onion rings at Sonic. But today I wanted Sonic and I still didn't get it.

Bottom line - Sonic needs to step up everything at...

It was our daughter's birthday and she has loved Sonic in the past, so that's where she wanted to go.

The horrible service and utter incompetence of the Kent location caused us to swear it off forever last year. We'd been to the Bonney Lake location a few years ago and it was decent. South Hill is our last option around here, but I'm highly sceptical, because we went to one in Charleston, SC last summer by the airport and it was by far the worst possible experience I can imagine. Sonic as a whole restaurant chain has spiraled into in irrecoverable dead spin.

Last night in Bonney Lake, we waited so long at a stall for someone to take our order that it actually timed out. I think it was around 10 minutes. No one ever acknowledged we were there. The place was practically empty and there were signs on several stalls saying only stalls 6 ,7 ,8, and 9 were open, plus the drive-thru, which only ever had a few cars during the 7 o'clock hour when were there. So, with no idea what they were so busy doing, we backed out of our stall and went through that.

I stated the first item of our order, a "#6 chili-cheese dog with fries and a strawberry shortcake shake". There was a very long pause, then one question after another about what kind of hot dog, if I wanted fries or tots, and what to drink...which I had just told her all of that. If she was in training, I could totally understand, but we've been to plenty of restaurants where that was obvious and someone's always there helping. I don't think that was the case here at all. She sounded more inconvenienced that she had to be bothered that she had a job to do. That became more evident when we eventually made it through the extremely slow drive-thru line of only a couple of cars in front of us that probably took about 15 minutes. She handed us the order and it was a regular hot dog drenched in relish. I was handing it back to her, saying it was supposed to be a chili-cheese dog, and she snarikly asked what was on it. So I explained the obvious to her. To the credit of who must've been the only cook in the kitchen, it got corrected quickly.

We pulled over into one of those empty stalls and ate right away, but the rest of our food was rather cold for having just gotten it. Oh, and that shake? There was no cherry on it, but my daughter found it later at the bottom of the cup. Strange way of making shakes.

Overall, what should've been a very quick trip for a few items took almost an hour and there was zero care or concern for anyone to apologize for the long wait or messing up the order.

What's with so many stalls out-of-service? Where's the professionalism, customer service, courtesy, and sense of trying to do a good job? Definitely not going back to this location, either. Sonic used to be such a great chain even 10 years ago....

Visiting and hiking at Rainier and decided to stop in for a bite. Pulled in around 9:15 to the car hop menu. Skimmed for a moment and pushed the button to order. After about 5 mins, a very irritated voice snapped that they don't serve outside anymore. We thought it was kind of rude for her to just shout that over the intercom, but we made our way to the drive thru. It was pretty busy so I attributed that to her sour attitude. We ordered and pulled up to the window. The guy at the window seemed irritated to be there. Just stated our total and held out his hand with a pissed off look. My husband handed over our payment (cash) and when he left his hand out for the change, the guy shut the window and walked off. We were surprised because we should have gotten a few dollars back. He brings our drinks and then tried to hand my husband the change while he was trying to organize the drinks. He made an irritated sigh when my husband didn't immediately take it. I understand that it's busy and you're trying to get through all the orders, but there is no reason or need to get rude when we are trying to get situated with a few drinks. After 15 mins, we get our food and leave to sit in the parking lot and distribute. We ordered 2 doubles with Bacon, one with no veggies and a chicken sandwich. We got a BLT toaster, 1 double with a hand full of lettuce and tomato, and a single plain burger. We were annoyed at it but by the time we got our food it was so late that we didn't have time to go back around to get our orders fixed. I'm guessing it was either a new crew or an especially busy day, I've never experienced anything like that at any Sonic I've been to. The service was disappointing, but the drinks and sides were correct and the food was still tasty, even if it wasn't what...