Perkins American Food Co. — Restaurant in Brainerd

Terrible experience on 4/14/19. Will not return. Visited this this location with my husband and toddler son around 330pm and will never return again after what we experienced. It was slow inside the restaurant when we arrived (we were happy about this having a toddler along) and were seated right away. We needed a few extra minutes to decide on what to eat...little did I know, the waitress interpreted a few mins for 10+ mins. While we were waiting on the waitress to return, my husband accidentally spilled a full glass of water on the table. I went to go find someone for help and for a towel to clean up. The woman I found handed me a single towel and did not offer to come help or ask if we needed new silverware and napkins etc. I was surprised to say the least. I have worked in restaurants, and usually when a guest spills something you go and help them out. At the very least refill their water?!?!?!? While I was trying to clean up our table, my husband went to ask for more towels. He brought with him the towel that I was given as it was soaked and was filled with ice cubes and he needed somewhere to throw it away. He came across the same woman who gave me the towel and asked her for more towels and a garbage for the towel in his hand...she said “ let me seat this customer and I will get you more towels”. So there stands my husband with no where to throw the towel in his hands, so he went into the men’s bathroom to throw it away. He eventually returned to our table with more towels on serving tray. At this point I was ready to leave. While all of the above was going on, our server was MIA. Our son started to get impatient so my husband took him on a walk up to the main entrance so he could look at their quarter machines while I was cleaning up the rest of our water and ice. The woman who handed us towels, according to my husband seemed annoyed that him and my son were in the lobby(I thought this was a family friendly restaurant). We are not the type of parents who let our son roam around unattended, so this was very frustrating to me. So finally our server shows up and proceeded to tell me that what I had ordered “ran out” for the day. This only added to my frustration(normally I would not care). Like I said above, we will never return after the mess we experienced during a slow time...I can’t imagine what goes on there when it’s busy. My suggestion is to find somewhere...

Wish there would be ZERO stars. Well, if you have 2 1/2 hours to waste and have nothing else to do and enjoy cold food, dirty restaurant, and poor service, this is the place for you! Sunday, June 19th we went in for breakfast. Told a 15-20 minute wait. That turned into over half an hour. Watched as the manager ran from here to there, making no sense at all in what he was doing, seeing tables all over the place waiting to be seated. Finally we were sat, we ordered right away. That didn't do any good, because an hour into it, I had to ask our server if our food was coming. Oh, our food was being plated in the kitchen. 15 minutes later, here is our food, cold, burnt hash browns, had to ask for our pancakes, and away our server went. By this time, I couldn't even eat anymore. Lost interest and wasn't even hungry. Asked for our check, but that was a mess too. Server gave another table our check, and gave us their check, but she fixed it by scribbling around on it. I got a menu and the check was wrong of course NOT in our favor. I asked the waitress if she could fix it and she wanted to argue with me that I wasn't including the tax. She handed us a $1.00 bill to compensate! WOW!!!!! How hard would it have been to reprint a correct check? Never were we asked though this 2 1/2 hours if we needed anything, how we were doing, or even any compensation! SOMETHING should have been compensated! Both my husband and I have been in the restaurant business most of our lives and this is way below standards. Not one good thing to say about the place. We found our own to go box and left the cash at the check out counter, because that was a cluster at the counter with guests when we left too. Shame on you Perkins for not compensating your guests! 2 1/2 hours! JOKE!! This delayed me in spending time with my Father on Father's Day, but...

My boyfriend and I have had breakfast here the past couple weekends and overall it's been good. We were seated right away and our server(s) came over and got us drinks and took our orders quickly. The only issue really was the wait for our food. I'm sure the kitchen is short staffed like pretty much every restaurant. The booths are clean, but most of them have small tears in the seats, but 🤷 Our servers have always been pleasant and prompt and I've appreciated their service. Update: had a late breakfast here and the food was good. My 7 year old enjoyed the kid's rainbow pancakes with hot chocolate. My omelette and hash browns were quite good as well. I have to say that the bathroom really needs some repairs and a deep clean. It's obviously cleaned daily, but whoever does the cleaning should be scheduled to come in and do a very deep clean on the corners of the tiles, and the stall doors and hinges. There are quite a few broken tiles, and two of the stall doors don't lock, though they do stay closed when shut. I was very pleased with the free pie we got because it was Monday! I didn't think we would get pie in the morning, I thought maybe that would only be a lunch and dinner thing, so it was very nice to have caramel apple pie...