Krispy Kreme — Restaurant in Grand Rapids

This is my Krispy Kreme story..I recently stopped in with my daughter to your Kentwood Michigan store on 11/16/19 around 630 pm. It has been a couple of years since I have gone in and gotten donuts. We now live further away and the light was on indicating that donuts were being made. I wanted a coffee and my 15 year old was excited about the fact of warm donuts. I had stopped in to the bathroom when we first arrived. There was trash on the floor, the bathroom actually smelled of someone smoking marijuana in it, no paper towels and water on the floor around the sink. I wondered how your employees kept up hygiene if they didn’t have paper items in the facility as we watched them use after I had been in there. We walked in and watched as the lady near the front handed out a donut from the line to a younger man who did not purchase anything and left. Thinking that this was still your tradition, we walked up to the end of the donut making line. We patiently waited around 5 to 10 minutes while others lined up behind us or they went up to the display to pick out their purchase. While waiting I watched the lady who had just handed a donut to someone proceed to check her phone, walk around aimlessly taking to others and went back to her phone. In the time waiting for someone to acknowledge us, I scanned the restaurant and was amazed at how filthy some of the tables and overall cleanliness of the establishment were at that time. While in line, the employee who was there originally, finally came back. I inquired if they still gave samples. To our disappointment, she said begrudgingly and mumbled something indiscernible and gave us cold donut holes. My daughter and I were extremely disappointed but we were going to order some and I told my child we would get a couple out of the two dozen we ordered. The store was busy and just observing how many employees you have in comparison to the people getting waited on was a disaster. Without me even saying anything, my 15 year old can easily pointed out the fact how disorganized and unwilling your employees are to help customers. I am not someone who writes criticism, usually when I am a patron somewhere I am more prone to acknowledge good experiences. To validate “my story” the customer who checked out next to us actually waited for several minutes, ordered and was waiting to pay at the end became so frustrated she left her order there and walked out. Before she stormed out, she shared with others around how employees were to busy socializing to help out and states how the place looked like it had “gone downhill.” In summary, we don’t frequent your store, but it will be a long time before we visit or purchase any items from KK. Your location for the amount of people working was not customer friendly or clean. There was no one directing employees and we were not alone in being dissatisfied with overall experience. For a Saturday when customers are out and about spending money, I would have serious concerns about profit margins and future impacts if I was franchiser or someone from corporate. The overall time to get two dozen donuts and cup of coffee was over 20 minutes. If there are doubts about the validity of this, I suggest you check your video footage from this evening. Our KK story was not...

Most inefficiently run business I’ve experienced. There was one person working the cash register, the drive through, and pulling orders for customers. He had on head phones, and work with one hand as he held his phone, which appeared to be playing videos, in his other hand. He had no sense of urgency, barely acknowledged the customers, and honestly seemed to be high. There was a handful of people in the back, randomly pulling donuts for who knows what, because none of those donuts made their way up front to the waiting customers, or those who said they were waiting 30+ minutes for online orders already placed. We waited 25 minutes to get 4 donuts, and there were only 2 other customers ahead of me who placed orders in store for 12 dozen donuts each. There were 2 or 3 more ahead of me waiting for online orders. Then the line stacked up behind me, with some leaving before getting anything.

The worse was when the cashier finally took the order of the guy ahead of me, and both the customer and the employee were on their phones. It took forever for this exchange as both fumbled around, half paying attention to what they were doing. At one point the employee came back with a dozen of assorted donuts. The customer and him talked some more, then the employee took some donuts out of his box, placed them back on the racks, then grabbed different ones. My son originally wanted one of those flavored donuts from those racks, but after seeing that, I said no. I only trusted buying a fresh glazed one from the line. I am amazed at the incompetence of the staff and poor...

I was so excited to finally live near a KK when I first moved here, because I've loved their donuts my entire life. But after going to this location a few times, I've been severely disappointed in every single visit due to the service and cleanliness. They take forever to help you, and the employees are often rude and apathetic about helping. I get that it's a low paying part time job for most of these people but that's not a reason to be rude to customers and to act annoyed when they come in. It's also a gamble on weather the donuts will be stale or not. I came in today and there was a sign that said "Our machine is down" and I had to ask them what machine they were talking about because I assumed they meant the card machine, but it was about the donut machine. They should have specified that on the note because "machine" is very vague. They took their time coming to help me and when they did they were barely listening to what I said. Upon being rung up, I come to find out that a half dozen glazed is 11 dollars?!?! That price is absolutely ridiculous. I understand that is probably not unique to this location but in what world is a HALF dozen donuts worth 11 dollars? To top it all off, the restaurant always looks very run down and filthy every time I've been there, to the point where I can see how dirty it is even from the drive thru. This location would benefit drastically from new owners that actually care because if it continues like this, I'm sure they will go out of business...