City Bagels and Bakery — Restaurant in Idaho Falls

I REALLY want to love this place. Truly. I’ve been a loyal customer since they opened a few years ago. It’s in a really cool old building, has lots of charm, and the food and baked goods are generally quite good. One of the bakers in particular is a phenomenal human being, and he makes the most incredible lemon cookies! Ergo, I have been willing to tolerate a very awkward and inefficient order/order fulfillment process.

When I arrived yesterday (a busy Saturday morning) there was a line. I only wanted to order a pre-made slice of quiche to go, and there were quite a number of people in front of me, most of whom were ordering custom-made sandwiches. A little background: The process in the bakery is that the order taker takes the order, fulfills it there at the counter (even when it’s a custom-made sandwich) before they take next order. So if you go in for a cup of coffee or a cookie and it’s busy it can take upwards of 15-20 minutes or longer just to place your order. As you can imagine, this process is incredibly inefficient and frustrating, and I and others have mentioned this to the people behind the counter -- and also to the managers -- several times, suggesting how they could improve the customer experience by changing their process. But alas, it’s been to no avail. (Note that you can find lots of online reviews that express this same frustration/suggestion.)

But, back to my story.

Just when it’s my turn to place my order another customer approaches the counter to change her order, and then another approaches to “chat” with the people behind the counter. More waiting. By the time they’re ready to take my order I’ve been waiting nearly 20 minutes and I again -- with some frustration -- mention to the women behind the counter that the process is very inefficient and NOT customer-friendly. They reiterate to me that I must wait my turn even if I’m only there for a cup of coffee or a single item out of the baked-goods display. To be fair, one of them is quite sympathetic and indicates that she understands that the process is slow and messed up, but the owners have so far chosen not to change it.

When I finally get to the checkout, I wait some more while the person in front of me changes her order yet again.Then another customer approaches to ask for napkins, etc. More waiting. I must admit that at this point I am VERY unhappy and my patience is wearing thin. I tell the young man who is checking me out that the whole process is rather awful. His response? “It’s not my problem and frankly, I don’t care.” At this point another employee -- who knows me -- comes out of the kitchen and says “hello.” I tell her how rudely I have been treated … and the young man continues with his abuse. She repeatedly tells him to be quiet and shush, and he repeatedly ignores her. I ask to speak to a manager, tell him my story (he responds very decently and appropriately), and leave the store. When I call back later I find out that the young man who was so nasty no longer works there.

I am very grateful that the horrible behavior of an employee was not tolerated and the manager took the situation seriously; however, until City Bagel makes the decision to change their order/order fulfillment process and create a more friendly, kind, and customer-centric environment I am going to take my business elsewhere. And I’m really quite sad...

I don't usually have any issues with them, the food is typically really good and I've never had any problems with the staff but my boyfriend and I came in around 10-10:30 am and they were fairly busy, which might explain why the mishap happened but idk, but ordering was fine we were given all the options to pick cheeses and what not and then I get up to the register and pay for everything, gave them a 20% tip, and then was asked to stay around the register because our food wasn't ready, so we kinda step back to allow the customers behind us to pay for their orders while we were waiting for our food. About 3 or 4 customers pay for their food and walk away with their food so after a little bit we started getting confused as to where our food was so I walk up and basically say something along the lines of "hey, we're still waiting on our order?" And the cashier looks at me and says "Did I already check you out?" So I say yes and she says "okay looks at the bag on the counter you got the 2 BLT's?" Which we got two breakfast sandwiches so I respond with no and she asks us what we ordered so as I start to explain our order the worker behind the cashier tells us they're still working on it so I respond back with "okay I was just confused because like 3 other people have already gotten their food" so the cashier says that it's really weird because they usually do the orders in order of when they were placed, just then a customer comes walking up to the register and says that the order she got wasn't hers, it turned out to be ours, the customer that pick up our order apologized for taking ours but the cashier almost made it seem like it was our fault for not getting our order (they weren't outwardly rude but they just kinda said "yeah we make orders in order so"), but there was no indication that our order was ready, nobody told us it was ours, they didn't even make eye contact with us and hold it up to indicate it was ours, and then instead of making a new order because a different customer could've touched our food or whatever because they left the restaurant, they just gave us the bag that she...

I really want to love this place but it’s so consistently unorganized and I end up just being out an excessive amount of time and whatever money I pay.

For example today, I ordered two sandwiches and half a dozen bagels. They gave me the bagels but forgot the cream cheese. No big deal, I just went and asked for it.

Then as I was waiting for my food, they gave my sandwiches to someone else. I had to wait for City Bagels to make them again but when I got home the order was completely wrong (maybe they gave me someone else’s food).

It seems they just worry about taking your order and money but don’t really have a good system for getting the correct food to the correct people. The cashier will literally give whatever bag is brought to the check out to whoever is front of them. They don’t check names on bag – there aren’t any names or intake record to know exactly what it is – they won’t check the food, they won’t check to see who’s waiting on food, they just randomly distribute whatever food is ready. I will say the young man at the counter was very kind and polite but that was the only positive. Other staff was disinterested at best.

This is about the third time this has happened to me and I’ve only been there a handful of times. When I have gotten what I order, I’ve liked the food but this time I can’t stress enough how completely unappetizing it was. I guess that’s to be expected when you get something you wouldn't ever order.

Another thing to note about hygiene, I did see the people that actually got my food open the sandwiches and thumb through the different layers, then trade with each other and repeat to make sure the food wasn’t actually theirs. When they returned it, the City Bagels employee tried giving it to me.

If you don’t mind random people you don’t know sifting through your food before you eat it then I guess you can just see it as part of the process and not be bothered.

If that’s a dealbreaker for you, you might want to skip this place until they get more organized. As for me, I give up on City Bagels and cannot in good conscience recommend it to...