Tropical Smoothie Cafe — Restaurant in Durham

I usually never do reviews but my experience at this location was absolutely horrendous! The customer service at this place deserves negative stars! Don’t waste your time or money at this location! They have children pretending to be managers or shift leaders! They are completely incompetent & have no clue on how a business should be ran or good customer service. I ordered an island green smoothie, chipotle chicken flatbread, and Hawaiian slider for delivery. After over an hour of waiting for my delivery , the dasher Benmil never showed up and lied on the app stating that he handed me the food. He never called or text to find my location or nothing. For all i know he could have eaten my food! I immediately call the restaurant for a refund or remake of the order and some young girl name Logan answered the phone stating there is no manager available and she was the shift leader. She then refuses to give me the cooperate office number and or remake my order for free . She claims it was not tropical smoothies fault and It was on the DoorDash driver . She then says that i would have to order again, pay for another order ,and maybe receive a refund for the first one some days later after going on the app. So basically instructing me to go on the app in figure it out myself. She didn’t offer any kind of solutions , lacked the knowledge/didn't even bother to try in fix issue! I can tell she was improperly trained and quite rude . Is this the kind of representation you guys want for your company? If so that bad for business! Im a general manager and that’s not professional or how business is ran efficiently! The very next morning i called the restaurant again in ask for a manager. Once again no manager available, so i spoke with another girl pretending to be the shift leader. I told her the situation of everything that transpired with my order the night before and she tells me that I can’t receive a refund ,that its nothing that they can do for me , and proceeds to hang up the phone. Completely rude and unprofessional staff. So i then had to drive all the way to the store and speak with your shift leaders in person to get full understanding and a refund after all that disinformation. Your shift lead Logan was very unpleasant and didn't offer me anything complimentary for all that inconvenience! She stated as though she did me a favor by giving me a full refund for my order i never received . A order in which you guys and your partnering company messed up. Which is a complete joke! It’s quite obvious that there needs to be adult managers in the building at all times supervising this type of foolishness & nonsense ! I have been ordering with this company for years and i would not advise anyone to visit this location. Ive seen bad , but this is by far the most incompetent staff I’ve seen at any tropical smoothie location. I would like to speak with someone in the cooperate office or the head manager in charge of this...

Absolute worst customer service! I walked in this evening super excited to order my smoothies. After 15 minutes of waiting, no one acknowledged my presence. Typicallly, when a place of business is busy they take the time to let the customer know they will be right with them. Needless to say, the 3 young females working neglected to greet or even speak to me. As previously mentioned. 15 minutes go by( I know, why did I wait that long? In my mind I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt as I noticed they were working on mobile orders). I finally asked one of the girls if I was going to be helped? Well 2 of the girls gave me a blank stare like I was crazy. I turned to look at the one and only other customer in the store and she was shocked too that I got a zero response. Even after all this NONE of the females apologized, they didn't say anything whatsoever. I was astonished at their rude behavior. I ended walking out as this establishment will NOT be gaining my business. I left disappointed and came straight home to my teenage daughters and shared with them my experience. Because after something like this I never want them to treat a customer the way I was treated. I understand that times are difficult and the food industry is experiencing lack of employees. However, this was not the case here. This was lack of etiquette, lack of manners, and lack of customer service. Clearly I'm not crazy or overreacting as the majority of the reviews are regarding the same reason. Note to the owners, you may want to have a talk with these rude girls. You are going to lose clientele and I now have zero desire to ever try going again. My thought process as well is if they give more importance to mobile orders they need to learn from Starbucks. Starbucks NEVER makes the customer feel like their...

Update after they contacted me: As you can see, the company reached out to me and asked me to fill out a survey about my experience. I did so and as a result they sent me a whopping $10 gift card and a generic apology letter. I didn’t write the original review to get something out of it but $10 for a $37 order that made me sick and had to be thrown away is pretty underwhelming. To reiterate, I will never shop at this franchise again.

Original review: This was my first, and likely last, time ordering from a tropical smoothie Café. I don’t post many reviews and certainly not many negative reviews but I just had to throw away $37 worth of smoothies so I think a negative review is justified.

I ordered two mocha madness smoothies for delivery via Grub Hub. They were delivered quickly and seemed fine at first, but we got regular plastic straws instead of the edible straws we paid extra for. When we started drinking the smoothies, we noticed a very strong perfume taste throughout the smoothies. We transferred the drinks to new cups, thinking maybe the perfume was on the styrofoam cups, but it didn’t help. Because of the cost, we tried to power through, but after a few sips, the overwhelming flavor of perfume in our mouths made it impossible to keep drinking.

I’m particularly sensitive to perfume, but I’ve never had an issue with it in my food before. I started to have a mild allergic reaction in my mouth and on my lips, and developed a migraine headache very quickly, so I’m glad I stopped drinking when I did.

I don’t know why this happened or if it’s typical of this location or the franchise as a whole. All I know is that I’m out $37 in food that was inedible and made me sick. For that reason I wouldn’t risk buying...