Zaxby's Chicken Fingers & Buffalo Wings — Restaurant in Cleveland

Admittedly, most of the "fast" food in Cleveland is far from it. That said, the last two times I've come to this Zaxby's they really set the new slowness record. Monday, I ordered ahead for curbside pickup and called when I arrived. I waited 13 minutes, watching car after car come through the drive-through. I got irritated and called again to point out this fact and they brought my food right out. I definitely didn't plan to spend 15 minutes of my 45 minutes lunch break sitting in their parking lot. Today I ordered for curbside, after work, and called when I arrived. Nothing. Called again. Nothing. I called 4 times and listened to ringing for 6 minutes. No answer, no voice-mail, just ringing. I finally just pulled around to the 11 car long drive-through. They have managed to render ordering ahead completely pointless at this Zaxby's. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Edit - 9/26/2023] I was considering going to this Zaxby's for lunch yesterday, for the first time a few months but I saw on the app that you can still only do inside pickup when you order ahead. Apparently I forgot to edit my review the last time I went, I believe it was in May. So... That means if you order ahead you still have to find a place in the crowded lunch-rush parking lot to park, go inside and get your food. The fries (and toast if you get that) will be soggy from sitting there in the closed box and bag with the steaming chicken. The breading on the chicken is also soggy where it's sitting on the container, from the condensation puddling at the bottom. THEN, you get to try to get some of the absurd line of drive through cars to let you back out of your parking spot and try to weave through them to get back out of the parking lot again. Basically, you're still going to be there for ~10 minutes, but now you get to have soggy food that was sitting since just a couple of minutes after you placed your order.

AGAIN, they have rendered ordering ahead COMPLETELY pointless and actually now made it a negative...

This Zaxby's is the worst Zaxby's in north Georgia--which is a shame, because I love Zaxby's from my hometown. The first time I tried it a few months ago, my chicken was BARELY done, so I didn't go back for a while. I decided to give it another try today... I pull up to order and they ask me to please wait, which I have no problem with, so I answered "sure." Somewhere around 5 minutes goes by...which is a long time when you're just staring at the speaker...and finally someone else comes on and says "sorry about your wait, you can order when you're ready." No big deal, I thought, and so I made my order and pulled up to the next window. The window opened and, to my horror, the inside of the building was disgusting. Everything was piled everywhere--carts filled with empty cups, napkins, boxes, etc. were just sitting out all over the area behind the counter. I don't know how they got anything done while tripping over all that stuff. When they handed me my drink, the lid had a BUG crawling on it and a piece of lettuce stuck to the bottom of it, at which point my imagination could only tell of the state my food was going to be in. Did they pick it up off the floor? I kindly asked for another lid and then checked my drink thoroughly for any other foreign objects, debating whether I should just leave. I decided to go on and take my food, assuming a refund would probably bring a long wait, which I did not have time for. Food was nasty. Fries tasted like old grease. Couldn't bring myself to finish it. Will never...

This evening around 6:30 I visited a Zaxbys in Cleveland, GA and ordered a big zax snack, one extra zax sauce, and an extra side of fries in the drive through. After I had left, I realized the extra sauce I had paid for was not in the bag so I checked the boxes only to find it missing from there as well, but also found that all of the fries in both my entree and side were horribly undercooked, unseasoned, and also severely lacking in number. I’m not someone to complain about the amount, but there were literally 10-12 fries in each serving (not that it mattered—I got tired of trying to eat bland undercooked potato sticks and threw most of them away). Chicken fingers were okay, but even the bread tasted bad (how do you even do that?? It’s buttered toast!). If there were a way to simply rate this particular chain I would, but hopefully someone out there in the Zaxbys community will see this and ensure that the Cleveland establishment is held to at least a somewhat higher standard than it seems to currently hold. Asking for fully cooked fries at a reasonable dinner hour, to get the items I purchased, and to have the same quality as I’ve come to expect from numerous other Zaxbys does not seem like that much to ask. I love this restaurant chain and this review is based on an experience at one...