LuLu's Express — Restaurant in Charlotte

Lulus food is awesome! I would eat there every week if they would simply get it together. They have received great publicity in the last few months but have not made adjustments to provide better service. I have been there 6 times in the last 3 months and each time is a disaster. So much so I wont even be bothered to drive there even when my mouth would love to be eating their food. This is before Covid and 2 visits after.

Prep: fill your bottles, sauces, drinks etc before opening. Successful restaurants prep simple stuff like that the night before. I have been their in line at 12:01 and they are spilling stuff, taking orders and filling sauce cups, then taking cards with dirty fingers and greasy touch screens. You can still do cook to order but that doesn't mean start up when doors open some more prep would do wonders. A break or lunch even with amazing food- who wants to spend 30 to an hour waiting for food.

Answer phone: I like another reviewer called over 50 times in one day during covid and phone just rang no answer or busy signal. Instead of letting people wait for 2 hours why not say you only take phone pickup orders so you can give people a time, cook the food, and they can pick up with organization. I live 30 minutes away - would be willing to drive there but not gonna drive (again like recently)to wait in complete disorder.

Expand: I have told people how awesome the food is and told them the caveats above. And many still tried to try you out. But they were disappointed for similar reasons and wont be back. More help? Online ordering? Things to consider.I say this to say you can get lots of one time customers, but you are killing repeat patronage. I tried multiple times cause I'm patient and loved the food -and even I have to tap out. People who love the food but say nah everyday and you'll never hear from then again because they can get in and out with no drama and better...

Let me start by saying the Lump Crab cake(s) were very good! I've gone in there 4 times and each time I've received my order the sides looked as if they were premade early in the day...so the MacNCheese look like it had been sitting and it's never hot barely warm. The greens were room temperature and to be honest the Lump Crab cakes look as if they've been sitting. I don't mind supporting black businesses but for God sakes, get some organization. We have to do better and not let it be just about the money. To reference money as a few reviews have stated, I felt the Lump Crab Cake platter was way too pricey! One lump crab cake and two sides came up to about 25 dollars. Too pricey! Paying that price at that spot only to receive food that was premade and had been sitting and barely warm was unacceptable. Granted I'm sure you prep/premake everything to keep things moving but you can't be giving out food like that and charging those pricey prices. Also this is just a suggestion, please tell your staff to STOP putting people on hold and not coming back to the line which keep your line constantly busy! That's unprofessional. Maybe you need to get two phone lines and have the lines strictly for call ins and have a section in your restaurant for pickup orders only and let the employee only cater to call in orders only and not have your employees taking orders over the phone and taking walk ins as well. It's too much for the amount of business you receive. People expect certain type of service and presentation and quality of food and expectations are even higher when they're paying a pricey amount. Paying was not the issue, it was the layout of the food and the customer service was terrible, the food was barely warm and the food presentation was not...

This is our first time visiting Lulu’s and I will start by saying it’s worth it but be prepared to wait. I’m not sure if they are normally this busy be we arrived exactly at 12 noon when they opened and waited over 2hrs. Cars were literally lining the street. To be fair I think the long wait time had to due with the fact they were taking orders while customers waited in their cars and it was really uncoordinated.

Though they were clearly trying to organize the orders and cars we ended up getting passed up on our order because we were told to pull up but the person started taking orders behind us. When we finally flagged down an employee we overheard her say “oh yeah I forgot. I thought someone else took their order.”

When she finally came to take our order after about 20 mins of waiting we realized that she had forgotten to add part of our order-The Honey Old Bay wings. We flagged her down again and she rang us up and very quickly came back with the wings. Weird but ok.

Another 20 mins went by and our food arrives only for my shrimp to be missing from the crab cake combo. This time I put on my mask and got out of the car to speak to a manager. After all we had been waiting two hours but it seemed like the employee just couldn’t get our order correct. The manager did come out, he was very kind and took care of the issue. He had them make the shrimp, didn’t charge me for it and threw in a couple of drinks for the inconvenience.

I would have rated 3 stars but honestly restaurants are out here doing the best they can right now. The food was so good. Pricey but you can taste the quality of the food. We will be...