Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Hickory

We went to this location tonight. My husband,daughter and 2 year old son and I decided to give this location another shot. Unfortunately we again had awful service. Now we know hickory can be full of ass hats But it wasn't too busy. When we got there the girl that was hosting seemed like she couldn't careless about her job. She had an attitude and I felt like she just didn't want to be there. Instead of giving my kids menus we had two adult menus and waited for our waiter to arrive to get two kids menus. When our waiter Robert got there he started off great. Got our drinks, kids menus and food order fairly fast. But that's the only thing he had gotten done fast or was attentive to us. We fought to get our drinks refilled. And we waited for our food 30 mins after the people behind us had gotten there and gotten there drinks, appetizers AND entries before we had gotten our food. A woman server brought us our food and then we realized they forgot our sons food all together. Come to find out it was never put it. So we waited to eat till our son could eat. Finally 10 mins later he got it. As we are eating not once did Robert come check on us. To see if everything was okey, refills or if we needed anything out of our way. As i was eating my salad I looked down and noticed I was about to eat what looked like an arm hair? Or maybe it was an eyelash. Either way I looked through my salad to make sure that it wasn't my hair that had gotten in there. And then I got sick realizing it wasn't me. But after 3 times of Robert running past our table I finally got him to come by and get our drinks and he immediately went off before I could say something about the salad. He came back refilled the drinks and then asked to take my salad. I told him no and I wish to speak to the manager. He got the manager and Brian for the record is amazing. He listened to my concerns and he brought the kids free deserts and discounted our meal very much. I wasn't looking for any replacement or compensation I just wanted it to be known of what was going on. Maybe Robert was swamped I don't know. It happens which is okey. I just feel like this location most of their waiters don't take the time to engage with their customers or keep up with them. Service itself could have been loads better but management is sweet and great. We will come back to this location but it's only due to Brian being so great and understanding. So 2 on the service and 5 on...

I am giving one star because I cannot give 0. I ordered the sampler as my meal and got the tomato basil soup, chicken wonton tacos, and spinach and artichoke dip. We requested the chips and dip come out first, and they finally did after almost 30 minutes. The chips had a very funny taste almost like raw or not cooked enough, but we later determined it was a grease taste. When my soup and tacos finally came out, the tacos were FREEZING COLD, the only okay item was my soup. My husbands quesadilla burger was requested to be cooked well done, it came out raw like meat hanging off in the middle from being uncooked completely. I asked for a manager twice because my waitress was pretty much MIA the whole time! My first response from the gentleman waiting tables next to us what that he would take care of it, and he did bring us more chips. Then when we realized the burger was raw he walked by again and I said “we really need to speak to a manager”, he response this time was “all of my managers are on the grill line cooking”. This response to me was totally unacceptable, a manager should have been notified immediately and should have come talk to us as requested. Since he once again took it upon himself to try to fix the issue, we simply advised him that we wanted to leave and were not paying for anything. He stated that was fine. I proceeded to ask what the store managers name was, and he didn’t give me that info instead asked if I wanted to talk to a manager that was present. Totally unacceptable again. I felt like he was trying to protect the managers or whoever was in charge. Im not sure if the whole thing would have fallen back on him, but that’s surely how he acted. He must be a great employee to have around or coworker! Lol. I finally obtained the store managers name “Summer”, and I hope she reaches out 🙂 Not finished, so we are in the car pulling out and out comes our waitress finally! Screaming and hollering advising “you forgot to pay; are you going to pay for the food?” By this time we’re laughing like cracking up! Really?!? We advised her that her co-worker I guess on semi management shift knew the details! Never again guys!...

Coming from a group of restaurant owners, the service we got from Emma was god awful… we arrived and she let us sit 10 minutes never acknowledged us then the manager finally came got our drinks and order no big deal as we are not hard to please at all but it gets worse.. 5 minutes later the waitress finally comes up and says hey I’m Emma and we told her hey no worries we already ordered…again we aren’t mad and there’s no big deal at this point.. she then says thank god and walks off… next we get the food, food was great as always. She never came to check on us until 25 minutes later. We were all out of drinks we asked her for a refill she said sure and never came back ..She only had 2 other tables in her section and she would walk by us and never acknowledge that hey we still haven’t got drinks when we were flat out.. finally we get up ourselves and go to the bar and get refills from the bartender Tyler, he was quick and helped out like he always does and he apologized… while at the bar she comes to the table and says oh do yall still need drinks?? We say no we went to the bar and got our own drinks she says ‘’Okay great I’m glad” like really Emma your glad we had to get up and get our own drinks???? Time for the bill and we asked 3 times for a to go cup before we finally got it and at that point she only had 1 other table and was not busy at all… long story short the girl cannot multitask at all and if you want to eat at this location do not get Emma she is god awful and literally made us take longer than an hour for a burger because of her slow service.. please as a word of advice ask for Tyler, he’s the bartender and he’s the only one up there that’s worth a damn.. he’s an asset to your business but she sucks. Emma is killing your business and needs to be fired… just some friendly advice.. If she worked for us we would have let her go quick…Again, management pay attention she’s hurting your business…we will definitely be back as we love the food and understand it’s not the restaurants fault at all but this solely falls on your server and we will not ever sit with that waitress again.. I...