IHOP — Restaurant in Knoxville

I love that I can order breakfast online 24/7, and either go pick it up, or have it delivered. Their crepes are my favorite. However, the location is rather small, and often seems short-staffed. But the employees are super hard-working, polite, accommodating, and even apologetic for the sometimes long wait. Their customer service ethics are top-notch: For example, I ordered breakfast for pick-up online today aroynd 10:50AM. I arrived at the location around 11:10AM. The restaurant was slammed, with 19 people waiting to be seated, and another 4 (including me-) waiting on carryout orders. The rush seemed never to stop. Unfortunately, I ended up waiting over an hour (I just walked out at 12:31PM.) I watched as several parties of people who had arrived after me, been put on a wait list, and evetually seated.....enjoyed a sit-down meal, paid, and LEFT before I got my take-out order. When I first arrived & announced myself, I was told that if my order "wasn't on the takeout table, then it just wasn't ready yet." So I waited. And waited. Checked occasionally, and was told the same thing. Eventually, the lead waitress approached me and politely said, " I notice you've been waiting here for a very long time - what is the name on your order?" When I told her, she approached the kitchen and shuffled through the pile of tickets....finding kine at the bottom. She turned and said it had only just come through. I didn't say anything, but my email receipt from ihop wasbtume stamped at 10:50AM, and said, "your order has been received & is being prepared, etc." So I waited some more..... during which time, the waitress offered me a free large coffee for my patience. About 25 minutes later, my order was finally ready. She triple checked my bag, and apolohized profusely for my extraordinary wait. I thanked her, said I understood that they're terribly busy & "things happen," & left. There had been an uber delivery man waiting on two orders with me....he waited a while too, but ultimately received it before me by about 30 mins. Overall, I love this location: the food is always hot, fresh, and delicious, and the employees are ALWAYS very attentive, professional, and seriously hard-working. I just think ihop corporate needs to expand the size of the building, and definitely budget for a larger team there. Perhaps come up with a better support & tracking strategy for call-in and online orders, so that employees are not constantly so overwhelmed. My final thoughts: the food, employees are great. Corporate needs to put more resources into this location to help it - and their employees- succeed. I'm a pretty laid-back, patient person....but I imagine customers get very frustrated and may take it out on the overwhelmed employees. Takeaway: best to dine in at this location.....for...

We read the reviews and like all reviews took them with a grain of salt, and knowing that it is 11 am on a Sunday we expected a wait. When we got there we were told a 10-15 minute wait, but were sat almost immediately. It is a very small resturant and we had to walk through the server's station to get to our table. My husband made the comment that maybe we'd be the ones who got the spot on server, and we were pleased overall with our server Kenya. She was friendly and attentive at first, but she must have gotten over sat because she disappeared. The four of us ordered French toast with bacon and hash browns, Cinnastack pancakes,Double Blueberry pancakes with a side of smoked sausage, and Strawberry Cheesecake pancakes with a side of sausage. We had to wait an inordinately long amount of time for our food and my daughter's came out 5 minutes after ours. My husband and son had no problems with their orders. However, my daughter's pancakes were cold, soggy and had only two of the four, and still no sausage. About halfway through I realized my Double Blueberry was a single and did not have any berries IN the pancakes. We brought the mistakes to the server's attention and at the same time the family next to us also complained that they never received their pancakes at all. (They had also been sat a good 20 minutes after us and got their food at the same time.)The manager came over and in order to fix the problem offered to give us a whole new order of Blueberry Pancakes to take home, corrected my daughters missing items and also gave us a 20% discount on our bill. Unfortunately it took them another 10 minutes to bring my take home Pancakes and when they did they were STILL PLAIN! The problem was brought to their attention again and was corrected however by this time we had been in this restaurant for over 90 minutes. My husband had another conversation with the manager who you could tell was stressed and ultimately in an effort to fix and apologize for the entire experience comped our whole bill even after my husband continued to try and at least pay for the two orders and drinks that were not wrong. She only asked that we give them another chance. While we are not in Knoxville very often we will go back one more time to give them that chance. I hope they survive...

The location at 7128 Kingston Pike in Knoxville, TN 37919 should close until they have a properly trained staff to run the restaurant. The "manager" on duty had zero idea of how to fix a messed up order entry. The cook was extremely new. The server, only entered one order in correctly. Lets break this down. It is more expensive to keep that location open with an incompetent staff than it is to close it until you can properly train people. There should be a recipe book available at the finger tips of a cook. If they do not know how an item is supposed to be prepped, then they need access to that book. The "manager" didn't know how to make the item either. At almost 8 PM, the new cook decided to clean the flattop. I get trying to get ahead when it is slow, but you do not throw water on a hot flattop when customers are standing at the freaking cashiers stand. steam rolls over to the cashier stand. Also, this new cook acted like he knew more than the "manager" on duty. There was a ton of money pumped into this location in a remodel only to have the service and staff get worse.

Now, lets talk about the server and the tablets for ordering. Tablets are a great tool to help expedite the process. However, if a server can not enter an order when it is given to them, then they need to go back to pen and paper. I ordered the chicken and pancakes on hoppy hour. It was done correctly, just at the wrong price. My fiancé ordered the southwest fajita bowl with the peppers and onions well done. Not a single thing on that order was correct. She got a country breakfast bowl. They forgot the hashbrowns n the bowl because the cook did not know that hash browns went into the bowl. Nor did the manager on duty. That would have been an easy fix if a recipe book was available. She also ordered fries that were cooked fresh. Only problem was, they were too hard. This location does not have a competent staff in front or back of house. This location should close until staff can be hired and trained properly. There is a very very slim chance that we will ever visit this location again. The staff that you had before the remodel, was great. The franchise owner screwed them over with the remodel. Everything was fine before the remodel and we visited three to four...