Einstein Bros. Bagels — Restaurant in Lake in the Hills

I love bagels and normally go to Panera once or twice a week to have one. Today, I decided to try Einstein for the first time. What a major disappointment. For a place that primarily sells only bagels I was expecting something good. When I walked in, I was the only customer and there were two employees. Neither one of them looked very friendly and said nothing to me. I selected a bagel and asked for it to be toasted with butter and I ordered a small coffee. The price was about a dollar more than Panera’s. I was surprised that the cup was about half the size of theirs. I went over to get light roast coffee and the urn was empty. I pointed it out to one of the employees and he took it away without saying a word and started making a new batch. I waited about a minute and then decided to look over the counter and see how long it would take. It had over five minutes left so I decided to have the dark roast coffee. I put in the condiments and poured the coffee and sat down. The coffee was lukewarm at best. I got my bagel and sat down and opened it and was surprised to see that it was much smaller than Panera’s, was only slightly toasted and was dripping with melted butter. It was very messy to eat & not very good. At that point, I figured the light roast coffee would be done so I went over by the counter, saw that the timer was done. I stood there for a minute, waiting for someone to bring it over to the coffee area, but instead one of the employees said “oh just go over there & get it”. I went behind the counter and poured it into the tiny cup and left. Needless to say, I...

One star is too high. Before today I would have given them 3, no more. Today, I went in, they took my order and payment immediately and then there I stayed waiting... for 45 minutes! No word in why things were taking so long. No warning that it was going to take a long time. In fact, no eye contact with a room of waiting customers at all. My order? 2 untoasted bagles and some capers. That's it. Bags placed on counter had names on them but none of the employees would call out the names so people had to go behind the counter and check for themselves. I do not berate restaurant staff ever, for any reason and I did not today. I just said if it going to take even longer then I would prefer a refund. They still said nothing of the wait and just refunded my money.

I will never go to this place again and I would advise those wanting decent food with just acceptable service to look elsewhere as well. And this was a management failure, all the more reason to not berate staff. They seemed...

took over 40 minutes to get my order. It was just a smoothie and an everything bagel. Mobile ordered 10 minutes before getting to the store to pickup the food. Smoothie was done and was handed to me, but I was still waiting for an Avocado toast bagel. Waited another 20 minutes as people coming in after me were already gone and waited for theirs. Came back up to the front to ask about my order and they said that they were out of the everything bagel but no one had told me? Then I had changed it to a plain bagel and waited another 10 minutes for it. Got home and then opened up the box and there was hair in my food. Tried calling the store to talk to a store member but the phone automated call kept restarting everytime I tried pressing #3 to talk to a team member. Very displeased with this place. Also the bagel was a bit burnt on the edges as well, especially waiting for 40+ minutes for...