Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Fayetteville

Dec 13. 8:20 pm. The one star for service was a result of the hostess’ rude attitude. It set the tone for the entire visit and nearly spoiled my high perception I’ve had for years about loving Cracker Barrel where you can find the warmest country home atmosphere, great food and service in any restaurant in any state. My mom LOVES when I take her to any Cracker Barrel. The hostess was not wearing a name tag so I do not know her name. She had curly short hair and is about 5’4-5’5. My friend arrived at the restaurant ahead of me and was already seated. She is from Germany and did not know to check in with the hostess. The hostess yelled at me when I started walking towards my friend. I did not know my friend did not check in with the hostess. The hostess continued to yell at me in a very loud tone. She said, “everyone has to check in with me. you need to tell your friend to come back over here.”. A server walked up and asked her, “why don’t you just seat her in my station? Her friend is in my station.” The hostess replied to the server, “because I just sat one in your station.”. The server replied, “No, I have the blue station.”. The hostess replied, “No you have xxx station (I didn’t hear the color.). Both of them got upset with each other and walked away for 3 minutes. The hostess returned to me and said, “look you need to get your friend. She cannot just sit in the dining room if I did not put her there! And I can’t seat anyone right now because we don’t have enough servers on the floor!”. (When I looked at the floor the restaurant was empty.). I told the hostess, “You are welcome to get my friend but I’m not going to go and get her because I don’t work for you.. I’m a customer.”

Anyway, I recommend Cracker Barrel management should review their policies for host staff and how they deal with customers. Maybe CB management can re-mentor and train the host staff so they understand the importance of the host role to customer relations as the first face of the restaurant. They really are valuable to the restaurant.. You can seat people even if you do not have enough servers and explain to the customer that since it’s late at night, “we only have a few servers on the floor. If you can be patient, I can at least seat you and get you some drinks.” And the management should train young hostesses that “the customer should not be able to hear conversations between them and the servers about the floor management problems. It’s not very professional. The hostess was so angry that when she seated us 20 minutes later, she said “Guess what?! You guys are the lucky winners. One of you get to have a booster seat for free. You all need to figure out which one of you are going to use it! She smirked, then as she laughed at her own joke, she slammed the menus down and only two sets of silverware for our party of three. What she should have done is take her lazy self and remove the booster seat like a professional. She may be too young to understand that. The photo of the booster seat is what she insinuated was for us 3 adults. All of us were military veterans from the community.

UPDATE I decided it would be more effective to speak directly with the manager rather than just leaving a negative review. The evening manager was very professional. He listened to my complaint. My friends and I reiterated that we do not want to this young hostess to lose her job but if he could just speak with her about how important her role is to the customers. Perhaps she had a bad day. The manager did coach and mentor her and then he came back to re-apologize. He told us he was not relieving her but just sending her home for the evening to reset and try again tomorrow. He told us she is a good and his intent is to develop her customer service understanding. I have upgraded the environment stars back up to four from one. I am very sensitive to the restaurant community because I know people depend on their jobs so we did not want the hostess to be terminated,...

I ordered the Thanksgiving feast from the app 3 days in advance. Everything seemed to go through just fine. Not long after I picked up my meal (after having to go all the way back again to get the rolls which were left out) I received a call from Jess the mgr saying my payment "failed" and that I needed to pay for my meal immediately. On the phone she sounded...well not very pleasant, and came off rude...so I was immediately on the defensive because on my end and according to my bank account everything had gone through. I wasnt going to pay over the phone so i had to go back yet again. It looked to me like the mistake was on their end, the way everything looked in my app and in my payment that had cleared. There were several mix ups already...they left out my rolls, didn't have one of the desserts I ordered etc. So why wouldn't I think the mistake was on them? Plus the way Jess came across to me I felt like it was implied that I had done something wrong which I was not happy about. There was a credit that showed up on my bank account that I didn't see until after she called. There was an item they did not have that I ordered but was told it would be refunded. The amount of the credit did not match the item refunded so I thought they refunded the wrong item. That's what it looked like.

Anyway after a couple rounds of detective work and me going back to the store yet again...a total of 4 times!...to get the documentation of the payments/reversals etc. it was finally determined that on the app, I had started an order but did not complete it and then made another order. The order I started but never completed is the payment that failed, but the 2nd order that I actually picked up indeed somehow never got paid for. It looked in the app like I had made 2 orders but there was no record of one of the orders and no record of one failing or being canceled....it was all extremely confusing.

In the end the problem was in the app and perhaps my apparent lack of understanding of how to use it. or the app was just buggy and not user friendly. Something was definitely off in the system. The whole situation was extremely confusing and it took me...who has a Masters Degree and I'm fairly intelligent lol...awhile to understand the issue. I had to sit down with Jess and have her go through every step with documentation. I was never notified that the payment had failed either by email or in my app so had to get the paperwork from the store. I feel like Cracker barrel made what should have been simple so much more difficult.

In the end in all fairness Jess did compensate me for the inconvenience of it all. She did come off harsh at first especially over the phone but she apologized. Also, the Thanksgiving feast was wonderful...the food was tasty and easy to prepare. I would order it again....but I would not...

Only giving 3 stars,because the manager Monique is amazing and does her best to rectify a bad experience. I love Cracker Barrel,but both times we have been to this location its been a nightmare service wise.

Our first experience at this location was September 12th at around 6:45pm. We got seated immediately (which was great),but sadly that was the quickest part of our experience that night...Upon being seated,we waited around 30 minutes to have our server come and get our drink and food order. At that point my blood sugar was low,as I am type one diabetic,and I asked if he'd bring us a basket of biscuits as I couldn't wait much longer. About 15 minutes later he brought out our waters and 2 small burnt biscuits. We ended up waiting another 45 minutes for our food or for our waiter to even come by,but we saw him on his phone at the door and then he went and took a call outside on the patio. At that point we found a manager and said we were leaving as I couldn't wait any longer. Monique quickly apologized & took down our names to offer us a free meal next time to make things right. We were very impressed by her attitude and skills as a manager.

Fast forward to Friday 9/16,we returned to give the restaurant another try and claim our complimentary meal. We were seated immediately,and had high hopes. But,all that kind of faltered when we saw we had the same waiter...He shuffled to our table and definitely had a demeanor that showed he didn't care much about his job. We ordered,and waited for our food. About 15 minutes later he brought it to the table. Much quicker than our first experience,but the food portions were SO small. My side of okra was 6 small pieces of okra in a bowl. My fried Cod was basically just Cod nuggets,and the pieces of fish were about the size of a McNugget. But,we didn't complain because it was a comped meal....but the waiter delivered the same terrible service as last time,and took 30 minutes to bring my drink refill. It was overall still not a great experience overall sadly.

I hated writing this review,but clearly there is a waiter at Cracker Barrel that hates his job. I don't think I will be back for fear of getting this waiter again,which is a shame because I usually LOVE any Cracker Barrel I've been to. Please Keep Monique,but maybe take a look at the young guy that usually works the back area of the restaurant. He doesn't seem like he cares about providing good service to your customers at...