Sonic Drive-In — Restaurant in Bristol

This location deserves 0 stars. After my first bad experience, I chalked it up to a one off. After waiting months to try again and hope for better service this time around, I was proven right. I attempted to call the store before resorting to leaving a review, however no one picked up, of course. This evening, I ordered online and was there within 5 minutes as the order detailed. Upon arrival, I automatically smelled a strong odor of weed in the parking lot. I really don’t care, and figured it was maybe one of the few cars parked in the stalls. (It is Mother’s Day, and only 3 other cars there beside myself) with that being said, it took 10 minutes for my order to be brought to the window by Johnny. Why order ahead of time and schedule a pick up if I still have to wait? After Johnny handed me the bag of food and one drink, he closed the window and walked away. I ordered a banana milkshake as well which was not handed to me. Assuming that my milkshake was being made or that Johnny was assisting another customer, I, again, sat patiently at the window for about two mins before I finally blew the horn. Johnny was no where to be found. I sat for another five minutes, blowing my horn in intervals. Still, nothing. Finally I see Johnny reappear with another worker. They both looked at me through the window, and turned away. At this point, I’m appalled. The other worker turned back to me and gave me the “hold on, wait” finger as if I haven’t already been waiting. Johnny never once came back to the window. Instead, the other worker handed me a half melted milkshake. At this point, I’ve been waiting for almost 15 minutes for an order which should have been ready. Annoyed and unwillingly, I still accepted the drink and left to bring the food home to my family. I wanted to request fresh food, seeing as it was now cold in the bag and the state of my milkshake, but I thought it better to go home and not escalate the situation. Pulling out of the drive thru, my mind was already made up that I wouldn’t be returning to this location. Leaving the parking lot, I was able to see that the same three cars were still parked in the stalls, and there were no other cars behind me in the drive thru. So it makes me wonder what caused the delay. After getting home and unpacking the food, I found out that my onion rings were missing, and my grilled cheese sandwich wasn’t even grilled. Just plain white bread and cheese. It is honestly, laughable. I keep including Johnny’s name because that is who is on my receipt. But he and the other employee have terrible customer service. Looking at all of these terrible reviews, at this point hire new staff or shut down the whole place. It seems that your employees don’t take their jobs seriously. I am expecting to hear from management.

Update A week later and still no response from management. However, other reviews have been answered during this time period. Seems that management is...

Alright, I don't write reviews, but let me set the scenario here and add to this saga. Drove home from Florida entering CT with 3 hungry kids. They wanted to go to Sonic which we do not have near us in Massachusetts and we dropped the ball during the trip. Heading up 84 we thought we nailed it by finding one in CT with the drive in, boy were we wrong.

Pulled into an outside drive up and hit the red button, just to wait for ten minutes and no one come out. Computer clearly says employees notified, please wait. Tried another slot, same thing. Walk to the doors, entire lobby windows/doors covered in paper, all doors locked. Car pulls in drive thru ordering so we go there.

Ordering at drive thru went fine except that they needed us to repeat things multiple times. We are no prudes but instead of a "sorry what was that?" or something all we got was "what? wait- ok what?" multiple times. Moving on-we sat behind the vehicle in front of us, at this point reading all these reviews and wondering what shenanigans we're in for. Other vehicle finally gets their single small-bag and drink order after TWENTY minutes. We pull up.

Get some of our drinks, I advise the dude that we tried the car kiosks and received no response. He LAUGHS! yes CHUCKLES and says "yeah sorry" before disappearing. 20 minutes later a girl comes with our bag of food. I asked for ketchup and hot sauce and she doesn't even try to hide an eye-roll. Grabs some ketchup and tells me they don't have hot-sauce. I said that's fine buffalo would do (we already asked at the speaker) and she proceeds to tell me they do not have buffalo sauce. I say we ordered it as part of a chicken tender meal and the sign says it's one of the sauces and, you guessed it, EYEROLLS her way to a counter and grabs me a pack of buffalo sauce. Eventually got my kids pickle tea thing and that's the end of that.

Pull into a car kiosk to eat and, YUP, should have checked those bags because we were missing two wraps. Given that place is locked down tighter than fort knox, at this point we cut our losses, spread around the food we did get and got out of dodge. We literally spent over an hour there.

Complaint line is an AI powered text message wasteland.

After reading below - HOW IS THIS PLACE STILL IN...

When I pulled in, there were 3 cars ahead of me. The line moved a little slower than expected, but no problem, sometimes people have large orders. I was able to get to the speaker to order in about 7. minutes. When I reached the speaker, I ordered 1 item and was told to “hold on”. I sat at the speaker for about 10 minutes and finally said “hello” to get no response. I repeated this 2 more times, then decided to try the option where the staff brings the food to your car thinking there may be an issue with the drive thru speaker system. I pressed the button and someone came onto the speaker about 60 seconds later. No problem there either. The staff member took my order, and we waited, and waited, and waited. We heard an issue with the car next to us as well. They pushed the button, submit their order, and 20 minutes later it did not come out. They decided to do a mobile order. Waited another 15 minutes, nothing came out. Finally they must have asked for a manger as she came out and they had their food 5 minutes later. Anyways, we waited a little over 25 minutes before I pressed the call button again and after nobody came onto the speaker, we left... The fact that this ordeal was over 45 minutes is absolutely absurd for somewhere considered "fast food". I could have a little more understanding and patience if anyone came onto the speaker advising they were short staffed, having technical issues, etc, but nobody had. I have NO idea what was going on in there, but I have never seen or dealt with anything like it in my 32 years, and I have worked in restaurants / fast food as a teen. I was so excited that Sonic was finally back in my town, but this will absolutely be my first and last time coming. I hope it is able to get figured out as encounters such as these will not keep this business here...