Hardee’s — Restaurant in Conway

Well let me say that I work at the cvs up the street from these guys. I have never once eaten at hardee's in my life. One of the hardees employees came into my store maybe a week before and was telling me about their new vegetarian options. I had mentioned to her I didn't eat meat. She was very nice, very friendly. Anyways, so sunday night I told my fiance, we don't have to go to BK for veggie burgers Hardee's now offers them! Cool. We go in, we ask who I imagine is the manager about the meatless veggie burgers and he explained to us that we could sub the fake meat patties on any combo. For what was probably ten minutes he couldn't figure out how to add a second patty to the sandwich and said the register wouldnt allow him to ring two fake meat patties on the sandwich. My fiance orders something else. To try to make it easier. After he rings up my fiance and starts my order, I ordered the spicy bbq beyond burger special, he tells me that' that is what my fiance SHOULD have ordered. He didnt say that while he was ringing up my guy. He didnt offer to refund it or fix it after the fact, after saying that that's what he should have ordered. My fiance eats his burger and he says I think this is a real meat burger. Well my vegetarian burger came with bacon. We had a whole convo with the cashier/ manager ringing us up about vegetarian options beforehand either way. I take my burger back the staff seem somewhat irritated with me for doing so. My fiance comes back in and tells the cashier you gave me a real burger. The cashier says that is what you asked for. I was there he did not ask for that. We asked about vegetarian burger before we had ordered anything and the cashier manager person said we could put a veggie patty on any of the combos and he still could not do it. My fiance got upset and loud and the manager did the same and he called my fiance a liar. I dont get that. I am a member of management and I never have seen discord like that between a management team member and a customer. Even if a customer lies which my fiance didn't by the way, why you would get loud and call a paying customer a liar in front of another customer at the same time and say they didn't tell you some thing that they actually did tell you is not being accountable. The only reason I gave hardees a chance is because of the nice employee that by word of her own mouth convinced me to try it. We will never ever come back. It was very disrespectful, very unwelcoming and confrontational and unprofessional. The way I was trained you fix the customers problem even if it's not you fault. You never say no or i dont know. That's never the answer. You listen to why they are upset, you ask them to make sure you understand why they are upset , you apologize even if it's an accident even if you didnt do anything wrong and you fix it. You want your customers to feel like you care about their needs in relation to your sale. We rather take our hard earned money somewhere they will be happy to serve us. I personally felt like I was bothering them because they had to remake a sandwich they messed up in a royal way. I mean bacon on a vegetarian burger.. No apology, no responsibility, no nothing. Nothing at all that let us know that it made a difference whether we come back or not. If you are a vegetarian I...

Quite easily one of the worst managed Hardee's in the entire fast food chain of Hardee's and Carl's Jr. restaurants.

I placed my order at this pot-hole riddled parking lot Conway, SC location of Hardee's for one of the $5 brown bag lunches to go. At the time of my order, three people were ahead of me waiting for their food. After 10 minutes, the first person ahead of me received their food. After 12 minutes, two more customers placed orders. Another 5 minutes passed and the other two people that were ahead of me when I arrived were still waiting on their order. All this time there was rarely anyone behind the counter prepping orders.

Another 5 minutes passed and the two customers that came in after me received their orders while, in addition to myself, the two individuals ahead of me were STILL waiting for our orders. At this point, I demanded to speak to someone about the 20 minute hold-up on my order and why people that came in 12 minutes after me had already received their order.

I was told by the cashier (who, along with the poor employee on drive-thru were the only employees who actually appeared to be working) that the DISTRICT MANAGER was the one prepping orders and they pointed to him at the prep area. He apparently heard the cashier because, with this said, he quickly disappeared into the back of the store.

Without hesitation, I walked behind the counter to the back of the store and found the District Manager doing nothing and demanded my order and a refund. Placing the blame on someone else for the delay, he yelled for another employee to help get the back orders filled and for the manager to come up front to issue my refund.

I finally received my luke-warm, $5 brown bag order which was incorrect (two cheeseburgers instead of one cheeseburger & one hotdog and burnt onion rings instead of french fries) and a full cash refund. Sadly, the other two customers that were ahead of me when I arrived had still not received their food when I left. I imagine they may still be waiting as I type this.

I called the CKE Restaurants, Inc (who owns the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. chains) customer service number and told them what happened. That was over a month ago and I have still not received any word back from them.

It is apparent that all that is required to reach the rank of District Manager (at least at the Conway, SC location) with Hardee's is the ability to breath and have zero work effort.

As of this posting, this Hardee's is currently closed for a complete remodel of the building which has only received one previous minor update (new tables, wallpaper, paint) since it opened over 30 years ago. Sadly, just like lipstick on a pig, you can change the look of the Conway, SC Hardee's all you want but unless you actually train your employees (not to mention, District Manager) in the field of "customer service", this location will...

I was tempted to recommend a hard pass on this Hardee's because of the service. It was obvious that not a single employee wanted to be there, and they didn't mind letting you know. They weren't overtly rude, at least not much. But there were no greetings, no smiles, no courtesy from the employees. The one taking our order stood at a register on the service counter behind where the cashier usually stands, so we had to raise our voices to give our order. That's probably why she got the order wrong after explicitly asking if we wanted a drink with the combo and an additional milkshake. I ended up having to buy another drink as a separate order, and none of the employees were willing to own the mistake.

I guess it's hard to blame them for not wanting to be there - I wouldn't want to be working at Hardee's either. But it is a job, and part of the job is to pretend to value the customer more than dried gum on the bottom of your shoe.

On a positive note, my Frisco burger was pretty good for fast food, and the fries were hot. But the food wasn't good enough to be willing to put up with the overall annoying, apathetic, combative (I also had to extricate myself from an argument with one of the servers after I tried to explain what happened), and slow (no one behaved in such a way as to indicate they were aware that speed of service is a goal in a fast food restaurant) service.

I guess I'm recommending a pass on this...