Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Des Moines

Starting with the positive: Our waitress was friendly. I saw people cleaning the tables and counters a lot. Manager was friendly and addressed issues better than expected. Now unfortunately comes the not so good. My family and another group stood at the door for five minutes with no host in sight. Even had a couple workers walk by and not a word. When we were seated the host didn't give us menus and the code for the online menu didn't work. So by the time we got our menus we had already been in the place for 10-15 minutes. The waitress was running back and forth from tables and was working alone for some time, so I get it, but there were plenty of workers and the place wasn't that full. We waited another 15-20 mins to get the order taken. Then there was a another long period of waiting. Heard others complaining and asking the waitress what was taking so long. When the food finally came 2 of 3 meals were stone cold. The appetizer had been too. Waitress wanted to take it to heat it up and i said no. We waited long enough. I asked for steak sauce, never got it. We never got a refill even when the waitress started getting help. Heard her tell another customer they were out of ribs. I don't know if the waitress was new but another table returned a wrong order. I did feel kind of sorry for her, but customers should expect quality service. The manager did come soon and had the chef make us an additional meal to take home and knocked off some money from the bill. I do appreciate that. My last experience at a different Applebees didn't even get that outcome. That's why I added a star, but unfortunately the entire experience shouldn't have happened to begin with. I only go to Applebees for my kids or if there arent other choices (I live in a smaller town than DSM). And I see the chain really losing it's steam. Too bad. There was a time they...

We went to Applebee’s on Se 14th St. in Des Moines Iowa today Sunday May 22nd around 4:30pm . We had 13 people my grandson just Graduated from high school . We had a server who took our order , got our drinks. And was gone . The place was really dead at first . We got an appetizer brought out by another server. Then about 20 minutes later another appetizer came out . We waited for our food for another half hour . A couple of dishes came out, half of the food was missing on the plates , no fries with the sandwich, or bread stick with the salad . Meantime other people coming in we’re getting there food eating and leaving, most of us did not get our food yet . We waited another half hour , then another dish came out. People all eating around us . Our table only had a few of us eating then an hour later more of our food came came out. The server said one of the sandwiches was chicken and gave it to the wrong person and he started eating it, and it was not chicken at all. Then I asked to see the manager, she came out I told her about everything she just said ok , and had the server bring me a coupon to buy one meal and get one free. I was so insulted! We had 13 people and some were children that had to sit for hours with no food. I will never step foot in that terrible place again. The manager never even apologized. It was horrible service, We were treated terrible . It was sad that our day ended so awful on my Grandsons graduation day. We should of at least got half off our tickets, or a lot of it free. I won’t be using that coupon. We all were going to order dessert we thought when we went in, but didn’t even want to sit there another hour and only a few get it at a time . Disgusting place. I have never been treated like this anywhere, can’t believe...

Very disappointed with how the manager handled an issue with the Applebee's gift card we used. I called on my way to the restaurant to check the balance of a new gift card, it held the full $25 dollars. Our bill came to a total of $27 and change. Our waitress brought back the check showing our card ran for $15.17... the math didn't add up, it should have been $2. After voicing our concern with the waitress she suggested she get her manager to see what could be done. Seth came to our table and said there was nothing he could do, they had to take wjat the giftcard balance was. Now I get this, we weren't trying to get more than what was on the card but there was $25 and they only credited $10. I told Seth several times the balance was $25 when I called 25 minutes before that amd all he kept saying was there was nothing he could do, amd said even his district manager said there was nothing. Seth the brought the used card back to our table and said I can call customer service to find out when the card was used anduring why it did not take the full $25 off our balance. It seemed he wanted us to leave and then call.... I called while still in the store and spoke with a very polite customer service rep that informed me there was $25 on the card and all of it had been used in the store at 2:10 that Saturday afternoon. When I told the waitress this she went back to the manager and came back with a $20 bill to make up for the difference charged to our card. The manager never came back out to apologize. This should have been handled differently, the manager made us feel like we were trying to scam them and should have called the giftcard customer service himself. It was an Applebee's giftcard. We won't go back to the SE 14TH location if ever an Applebee's again, poor service byou...