Chipotle Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Knoxville

This location is horrible. The cafe was a mess, tables were dirty and trash on seats and ground. Looked like no one had gone out to the lobby to do a sweep all day. There were two forks left in the canister and looked dirty. When I approached the counter to order my food, the rice had no cilantro, so I asked the worker why there was no cilantro, and she said they ran out. So my next question was if the rice had any flavoring, because they are known for their cilantro lime rice, right?! She answered me, apologizing that it was only her 3rd day and she wasn’t sure if it had the lime salt. I asked for a sample and she was kind and gave me a sample. It had no flavor and tasted like plain steamed rice. I was bummed, but figured maybe I could add more salsa to make up for the lack of flavor. I also always get fajitas on top to add more flavoring, but there was few and they looked like they had been sitting for awhile and they were mostly onions. I got a veggie bowl and I always get my guac on the side, and get chips to go along with the guac. Well since my rice had no flavor, I skipped on the fajitas because they weren’t pleasing to the eye, I thought maybe they would be kind enough to throw in the chips for free. So I asked the cashier if I could possibly get the chips comped since I wasn’t happy with the rice and lack of fajitas. She said she would have to ask her manager. A very young man, maybe early 20s comes out from the back and I explained to him what I was requesting and why. He had zero customer service skills and looked at me as if I were asking for a free meal. He asked me if I was sure the rice had no flavor, but in a rude tone as if I were an idiot. I told him that I just tasted it and it has no flavor at all. I also said I do not want a free meal, I’m just asking for a bag of chips, that cost what, less than $2? I thought that wasn’t asking much. He scoffed at me and started to argue at first that he wasn’t going to comp the bag of chips. I could tell he was very annoyed and he was unprofessional by his mannerisms. I got annoyed but wanted to keep my cool, because I didn’t want to stoop down to his level. I told him I worked in customer service for 20 years and I would never treat a customer this way. He grabbed the bag of chips, tossed them onto the counter from a distance and huffed and puffed as he walked to the back. I couldn’t believe it. Such rude and unprofessional service coming from the manager of this chipotle. The other two workers were decent, but the atmosphere was disgusting. I will never go back to...

I’ve never written a one star review. This deserves one.

Quite frankly, after multiple frustratingly poor and disappointing experiences at this location, I hope management makes a change.

The staff here is ANYTHING but friendly. As soon as you walk in it’s as if they would rather you be gone. I’m a friendly person and easy to get along with however ive gotten attitude multiple times from staff for small things.

On my most recent visit i accidentally scanned my free drink QR code before I could and the cashier let me know very clearly that I was wrong and that I had not told her before that I was going to scan a drink. I apologized and paid. (There are no instructions on the app)

The time before last the girl who was putting our food together was doing half portions (I mean 4 small pieces of chicken in a little plastic cup) and calling it a full serving. I asked if she could add some more kindly and she added another 3 pieces begrudgingly. As we are checking our there was what I can only assume as another employee off duty who was hanging out standing around where you pay which was obstructing customers and he was getting free food while the rest of us who paid were having a difficult time getting anyone to man the cashier long enough (they were distracted by the off duty employee) to pay and eat our food!

As we are waiting for someone to collect me and my wife’s payment the system shut down! The staff told us we had to wait to pay before we could eat. Meanwhile our food is getting cold and the off duty staff is still receiving free food as we wait.

All in all the SERVICE here (with the exception of a few kind souls who I truly pity and who really do work hard) is completely lacking in anything worth mention, underperforming in every way, and devoid of any of the important qualities that a successful or even passable business/restaurant needs to do good business.

Lest management thinks this does not directly involve them… I assure you that sales will, and probably already have, fallen due to the afore mentioned issues.

I hope for the best to those who work here and are truly hard workers. You deserve better.

P.S. The...

This Chipotle is consistently out of at least one ingredient on mine or my wife's burrito every time we go. How on earth do you run out of black beans? The other issue is that on almost every visit I will be harassed by the cashier to come pay while my burrito is still in the middle of being prepped, as if paying sooner is going to get me out the door faster and speed up their throughput. It doesn't work that way Mr./Miss cashier because you still have to finish my burrito! All you are doing is distracting me from making sure all the ingredients I want actually make it onto my burrito, which is not always the case. Also, at least for this location, the Chipotle app is not a timesaver at all. I put in an order at 6:30 for two burritos to be ready at 7:00 pm. I arrived at 7:05 and they had 'just started' on my order. Meanwhile the entire normal line cycles through while I'm waiting, including two people who came through the door after me. If I had arrived and gotten in the normal line, I would have gotten my order faster and been able to watch them make my burritos, which once again turned out to be important because they left out several ingredients that I asked for, including medium salsa and cheese.

To conclude, it is not the best experience eating from the Cedar Bluff Chipotle. I have had much better luck with the Oak Ridge Chipotle where I have so far always had pleasant experiences and correct orders, which, I suppose, is why they closed the Oak Ridge location.

Edit 2021-03-029: I would also add that the Chipotle website has no interest in tracking issues that we have with the local restaurants. When I attempted to report an issue with lack of ingredients today there was no way to do so. The website consistently offered a way to submit feedback but then the submit button did not function. It's almost as if they want to give the appearance of caring about customer satisfaction without putting...