Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen — Restaurant in California

This restaurant has really pulled it together over the past couple months. The wait has been reduced and I’m seeing familiar faces behind the counter. The kitchen dynamic has obviously changed and communication has improved, which means the customer gets their food faster. They have even handled the non-stop business coming in the drive-thru during the home-sheltering initiative, and the waits were very reasonable. Changing my 2-star rating to a 4.

Previous review:

I am a life-long Popeyes lover and I hate KFC. I have been to Popeyes all over the world to include Japan and Abu Dhabi. I know when something is severely wrong with a particular location. That being said, I have never seen any Popeyes location with the issues that exist here in EG.

In the last 4 months and about a dozen times coming to this location, the disorganization in the kitchen has always resulted in a ridiculously long wait to get food.

Imagine seeing an episode of Hells Kitchen where the teams are making chicken with a full dining room of patrons, but there is no Gordon Ramsay. No one is communicating, orders are getting confused, no food is coming out of the kitchen. The cooks are wanting to do a good job, but the team dynamic is non-existent. The leadership on the line is completely absent; the managers appear to be just as confused as their workers.

This place is a potential goldmine for the owners; it the only location for miles and the demand for the product is clearly there. The demand is just not being met efficiently.

Here are my suggestions:

Hire managers for the management positions, not just the closest candidate you can get to meeting the requirements. Leadership is much needed to drive that team during peak hours.

Put the sporks, napkins and condiments out near the drink machine like every other location instead of making us ask for them and take up staff resources. We are the customer; we can handle getting what we need for ourselves while you handle cooking the food. Instead of taking what we need because we can simply go get more for ourselves if needed, we will ask for more than is needed just so we don’t have to bother your register worker again. This is clearly not the way to save money on the small stuff.

Evaluate your line efficiency. I see people in all positions running around trying to do everything else. Assign tasks to a specific position so you know who should be getting what, when it is needed.

Don’t neglect dining room cleanliness. If we are going to wait for the food, at least let us sit at clean tables.

Again, with only a couple exceptions, the individual staff members have good attitudes and seem to want to do their best for the customer. They just need somebody to give them direction and keep the operation moving smoothly. Close down for a day to conduct training if needed. Consult the managers at the Travis AFB location if you would like to mirror practices of a fast and efficient operation with even more customers but less staff at any given time.

January 2020 Update: Nothing to update. Different faces; high employee turnover. Same wait. Employees visibly and verbally frustrated with vocal outbursts towards each other. We saw the cashier in the front yelling at the people at the prep station in the back and nobody bothered to pull her aside or send her home for the night. All the customers staring at each other like, “did you just see that?” Bring in some real team...

If yelp allowed 0 stars I am sure this place would be below 1 star. They barely are now and it is obvious why if you ever try to get food here. Worse place for customer service. It's obvious the franchise cares less about customer service. I guess unless their sales start to decline then they may concern themselves with this horrible customer service reviews. I ordered food on the app. The app said food was ready. Pull to the drive thru only to be asked 5 times what my name was. I guess "Tim" is hard to understand. So she proceeds to tell me my food isn't even started as they just got the order. Remember I got a message that said the food was ready for pickup. Then I go to the window and the guy says. " yeah we don't control when the app says the food is ready" what?? He then says. Sometimes it's 20 to 30 minutes after the app says to pick up your order. I said they don't simply go off of how long it should take but he was so clueless. Then he finally walks my food out and repeats that " we can't control how long the order will take. Wow. Simply clueless is all I can say. Stay away. You have been warned. Talking with these employees here, you will loose brain cells they are...

Horrible horrible customer service in drive thru. First Alejandra hands me my soda and it’s leaking. I proceed to clean it and supposedly at that time she also informed me to park for my order. I was so busy cleaning the leaking soda that I did not hear what she said. I then ask her if she wanted me to park since clearly my order was not yet ready. She responded by saying “isn’t that what I said” I was like I didn’t hear you. I then told her that I am not moving because of her bad attitude and I will wait at the window for my food. She then gets the manager Veronica who is unprofessional at another level and basically tells me I need to move and wait for them to bring my order. While she was talking to me I could see Alejandra laughing under her mask. I pointed that out to Veronica and she said she will talk to Alejandra as customer service is very important to them. I asked for Veronica’s managers number and and name and she would not give it to me and said she cannot. I then proceeded to park and wait for my food. It was the most horrible experience of my life. I will find out who the owner is and make sure I put my...