Perkins American Food Co. — Restaurant in Kearney

My mother and I have been traveling 8 hours, and stopped in Kearney, NE for the night. We love Perkins, so we were very happy to see one here! When we entered, there were people waiting on benches in the lobby. My mother has MS, and has trouble walking/standing and uses a walker. The lady in the lobby did not greet us or smile at us, but rudely said "Two? I need a name." I told her my name, and she turned away from us to ignore us and straighten menus. There were 21 customers in the restaurant, 5 tables in total being used. There were only 2 servers working, and they were working very hard, while smiling and being friendly/polite. After my mother had to stand for 5 minutes, I interrupted the lady still working hard pretending to still straighten those menus (and not helping the poor servers working their tails off who were serving, and bussing all of their own tables) to ask when we could sit down. She glanced over at me to say "when the server takes drinks to that other table I will." As I said, my mother has MS, and the seats were taken by other people waiting to be seated. We would have been happy to sit at a table to wait. This lady (who reluctantly let me know she is the Manager named Jennifer) was rude to at least 8 other people who turned and walked out when she said there was a 40 minute wait time. There was no explanation why we had to wait 10 minutes to sit. Our waitress, Alexus, was amazing!! She was polite, friendly, and a great server!! The food was very good (thank you to the chef). The other waiter was also very polite, friendly, and great at serving his customers! I watched Manager Jennifer be rude to everyone checking out. Taking their ticket, stating the total, and taking the money. No smile (how easy is that to do?), no small talk (how was your meal?), and especially no thank you! How sad. I heard customers say they would not be back because of her. If I lived near here, I probably wouldn't either. I was very polite when I did ask her why she made my mother wait so long to be able to sit. She said "We only have 2 servers." I softly explained that would have been good to know, maybe you can speak to your customers instead of turning your back on them? Maybe smile, maybe thank them for coming? That's how you do good customer service, and keep your customers coming back. She stared blankly at me, mumbled something, stated our total, and ran the credit card. Then handed me the receipt, and walked away. No smile, or thank you. So I guess nothing will change. I feel sorry for the servers who were working so hard with no help from...

I want to start this by saying I have never managed a restaurant but over 35 years of eating out of restaurants all over the United States I have seen restaurants with good management and bad management. I have seen good help and bad help. I hope this can be viewed as a positive criticism. Yes it is hard to get good help right now I will agree with that but the help you have needs to have good support from management to give the customer the best service. If hot foods needs to go out and servers are busy somebody else needs to get it out including management. If cooks are slow and jammed up on the line then management needs to jump in and help cook. I have seen at this restaurant the manager clean a table and seat somebody right away no matter if servers and the kitchen are already jammed up. What would be wrong with just putting people on a list until you get caught up. I have seen this at other restaurants when they get behind and it works. People waiting in the lobby get acknowledged and if they choose to leave because it is going to take to long to get served I would be less disappointed with the restaurant myself compared to getting seated and not getting waited on. Talk to the customer see how they are enjoying or not enjoying their experience with the business. If you are not using a list at least acknowledge the customer in the lobby. I have seen the front lobby go for extended periods of time with nobody even checking if somebody was there or waiting to get checked out. People will stop at a Perkins because of the name if they are from out of town not because of the service. If they get bad service believe me they won't be back. I'm a regular at this restaurant and I will keep putting up with the poor way things are getting done because there isn't a whole lot of choices for 24 hour restaurant service in this town but believe me if an Ihop or Denny's or any other chain were to come to this town they might as well close the door on this place unless...

I'm sorry but the food and the service was not good at all. I don't even remember my servers name because the service was unexceptional. The only time I felt like he was on top of anything is when my brother left his food at the table after he asked for a to go box. We pretty much had to stop our server to get service or he was just trying to run away. I know that he didn't really have too many people in his section. My food by far was the worst I feel. First I ordered mozzarella sticks as the appetizer, great they came out first unfortunately they were not even warm. You could tell that they had not laid them down long enough. I had to pretty much stop the server because he wasn't going to stop to ask any questions to take the appetizer back to get thrown down and reheated because they were not even good enough. He acted as if he was annoyed but still apologized but came back with them microwaved and hot. My food was a chicken strip dinner and I didn't even eat half of it and didn't take it home. Chicken strips were burned and crispy hard to bite into and dry. Baked potato was pretty much still hard as well. I should have just paid my check and been done with it but the muffins looked delicious and they had a special by 3 get 3 free. My mistake looks were deceiving because those muffins were not delicious. Hard and bland. I really had my heart set on the food because my brother had asked me if I wanted to take him to the store and he would make dinner. Next time I sure the heck will because I felt crushed when my...