PITA Mediterranean Street Food - Covington — Restaurant in Covington

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for Tete — But management needs a serious wake-up call

We visited Pita Mediterranean Street Food – Covington on Sunday, April 27, 2025, at around 1:00 PM. We were warmly greeted by a kind and gracious employee working the lunch shift—Tatianna, or "Tete." She was the one and only employee on duty.

Let me be clear: Tete was cooking meals, handling take-out orders, running the front counter, maintaining the dining area, managing kiosk issues, and still made time to smile and greet customers—all without any backup. I spoke with her for a few minutes and learned that a second employee wouldn't be arriving until 4:30 PM. That’s more than half the day with just one person running the entire operation.

When we entered, Tete was preparing a take-out order. We opted to order via the self-service kiosk to avoid piling on more duties, but she still brought our food out with a smile and an apology for the wait. She also noticed we had accidentally ordered an extra drink on the kiosk and proactively ensured our credit card was refunded—without us needing to say a word.

The food? Hot, fresh, and truly exceptional. One of the best meals we've had from any fast-casual Mediterranean spot.

Now here’s the part that really matters: Tatianna was breaking her back to give every customer a great experience. That kind of care and integrity doesn’t just happen—it’s built into someone’s character. She was courteous, professional, and laser-focused on making people happy, even under ridiculous circumstances. You could see that she genuinely cared. Employees like her don’t grow on trees—she’s a rare one, and she deserves to be recognized, protected, and promoted.

Now let’s talk about what’s not okay.

After leaving the restaurant, I did what I usually do—I checked online reviews. And what I found was disturbing: this exact situation has been happening for over a year. Multiple reviewers have pointed out that a single employee is often left to run the store, and complaints about dirty floors, poor cleanliness, and lack of support have been consistent and unaddressed.

Let me spell it out for management: Leaving one employee to cashier, cook, clean, prep, refill, serve, handle kiosk issues, and maintain the entire store is not just poor planning—it’s reckless. It’s unsafe, unsanitary, and completely unfair to the employee. The restaurant’s floor was dirty, and the soda machine had a foul, sour smell. We chose not to get sodas because of it. Not because someone wasn’t doing their job—but because they were being set up to fail.

What’s worse is that the company appears to be aware of this issue and has done nothing to correct it. You’re leaning on good-hearted, hard-working people like Tete to hold the place together, while customers are noticing the breakdown—and posting about it. The reviews don’t lie.

To Tete ("Tatianna") – You are a rockstar. Seriously. I don’t know how you did what you did during our visit, but you made it look easy when it clearly wasn’t. You are the reason we’ll remember this meal with a smile. Your leadership, character, and grace under pressure are signs of someone destined for great things. Never forget that. Take the bull by the horns—you’ve got what it takes to lead and inspire, wherever life takes you.

To corporate/franchise ownership – Do better. You are lucky to have someone like Tete on staff. She’s doing your job, your cleaning, your customer service, and holding your reputation together. She deserves support. She deserves staffing. She deserves to not be alone during a lunch rush.

People like her are rare. But your apathy? That’s not rare at all. Fix it.

Please be advised—I will be contacting corporate directly to report this inexcusable behavior and lack of leadership oversight.

UPDATE: 05/14/2025 @ 4:47PM: I tried to call the restaurant (770) 728-1184 to inform Tete that I had posted a review. There was no answer and the voice mailbox was full. I have to wonder how long its been since the messages have been checked...

Food was good but the service was terrible. The place got overwhelmed by a large order when we arrived, which we could have forgiven. However, after an hour went by, and one of our party never got their food, we asked the cashier if they had somehow missed an order and she barked, “we’re busy”, without even stopping to listen to us. I watched her as she went behind the counter and slowly realized that she had screwed up. I kept watching as she frantically spoke to the other staff while trying to avoid my eye contact. No one came to apologize. No one came to explain what was being done. I could hear her talking to the other staff members about the missing order which she, again, screwed up. I could hear her describing MY order. Finally getting angry about his missing food, my friend addressed the cooking staff directly and halted their wrong directions with the ACTUAL details of the missing food. The cooks claimed that the food order never showed up, but we all had separate receipts so it must have. More excuses. Eventually the food came but we had to get it to go because we had to get back to work and my friend had to go hungry a little longer. We work in the film industry, our days are stressful and we work up a big hunger. We will make sure that our production does not try to come here, or order for the office, because the staff clearly cannot seem to function well enough to get the right orders out. All of this could have been avoided if she had taken a second to listen to our concerns and had communicated with us instead of...

Great food...TERRIBLE SERVICE. This place can be 5 stars if their employees actually cared about their customers & the service they provide to them. My first time here was in the day time & my food was awesome. Ever since then I've came in the evening/night and my order is never correct either they don't have all the items to complete the menu item I ordered or they get it wrong just because they weren't paying attention or the best yet if you call around 8:25pm they purposely don't answer the phone until after 8:45pm so they can tell you that they're not taking anymore orders because they shut the grill down. I literally called them for 20 minutes back to back and got no answer until after 8:45 on more than one occasion and the first thing they say then is we're no long taking phone orders. If this places closes at 9, they should be servicing people until then. And the night manager is aware & participates in not answering the phone until they can tell the customers it's too late. Get a whole new staff of people who actually care about the job they're doing & you will be all 5 stars because I see everyone else has had similar...