Smoothie King — Restaurant in Lynchburg

I would like to review this and give it a hands down 5 star. To facilitate this review, I will use pros and cons....please use any cons as minor and understand it is just an opportunity to give yourself a pinch(thats what I do when I am frustrated).

Pros= Very excellent product, excellent selection and very friendly staff. Its hard to explain but 90% of them have the "serve" down, in customer service. The menu allows you to eat healthy or splurge and get a big ole fat bomb if you are rewarding yourself or celebrating. The ingredients feel and taste very natural. Unfortunately, almost everything we eat these days is ultra processed, I am sure that has no direct correlation between cancer and autism, none at all. Rewards on App are decent, when I was coming up, you would get a free smoothie for buying X amount of smoothies....I am not sure which is better. Lets see what else.....the location is primo and I very much appreciate that. Great job all.

Cons= Lines are slow, a lot of times this can be because of the not so smart person thinks its top daring to pull up closer than 2 car lengths away, this means the next person can't reach the speaker to talk to the order taker. The menu is challenging for novice SK patrons. I will see a family that obviously have a hard time making decisions based on the shear number of choices. No biggie. The prices have exploded, but then again so has everything else since Biden took office and it started well before Russian War so lets not! The employees have no idea what the specials are....I see this everywhere so this is not a singular problem at SK. Finally, I use Mint the finance and budgeting service, I did a 2022 breakdown of how much I spent in the calendar year. I spent over $1700 at SK in 2022. That's cool, I like the smoothies and I somehow have not gotten tired of them. The one thing I notice is the manager is not very kind. She is never ugly to me, she just seems to complain about staffing shortage, I've heard her complain behind the counter about how many hours she has worked over the last few weeks, on the occasion the app has messed up, she has acted like I am inconveniencing her. I have spent 20 years in customer facing roles she is in and yes I know her family owns the business but its imperative she pinches herself on hard days. Remember these concepts of customer service;10 foot rule, "no problem" is a problem, when client facing you are on a stage and pre-covid customer service was a determining factor in where we spent our discretionary dollars. She is obviously excellent at her job and everyone patron should be treated equally, but maybe try to add a smile or a thank you.....its astonishing how far those simple words go. Instead of telling 150 how good my smoothie was, perhaps it would've been 200 referrals if my interactions with her were more pleasant.

Cheers to the owners, the manager and all of the wonderful associates for a...

This hands down is the worst smoothie king i have ever been to. I have been to many from NC up to MI. I have never been treated so disrespectfully. Twice this week they screwed up my order, both times they tried saying i was to blame. First they made my choc peanut butter into a choc blueberry and said that was the way i ordered it, i went back threw and the girl said "that's the way i ordered it". Eventually she said "fine, I'll make you another one." With total attitude, then when it was finished she couldn't even give it to me she had another coworker. The second time i ordered a strawberry pineapple, they come to the window, never told me my total scanned my phone when the girl brought me my smoothie she said i have both your smoothies i said i only ordered one, she said you paid for two, i reiterated i only wanted one, she told me she was new amd had to get the manager. At least the new girl was pleasant, the manager (supposed manager) came to the window very rudely said "we confirmed with you that you wanted two." I tried explaining i couldn't hear very well with their speaker system and she gave more attitude and said "well i can't give you a refund the best i can do is give you a gift card.". I was on my way to work amd didn't have time to talk to argue, so i took the gift card. First off if you can issue a charge you can issue a refund, second off I know it's hard to get good help but come on basic customer service 101. Maybe covid has gotten the best of you and you no longer care about your customers. What i can tell you is i told at least a half dozen coworkers, and they all agreed tropical smoothie is much more customer friendly. After I use my gift card and the money I have on my rewards account i will not be back. And seeing how i spend at least $100 week i can screen shot my account if you want me to prove this claim. Signed 1 of many lost customers. Way to ruin Smoothie...

Went to smoothie king for national smoothie week. Tried using the BOGO deal available. We asked ahead of that the BOGO deal was happening. We are a family of 5, so we ordered 6 smoothies. We read the fine print of the offer/deal to make sure it would be ok. Nowhere does it say one deal per customer. So we assumed it would be ok, and again asked bedore we ordered. First girl had no idea. 2nd girl was rude and defensive when I was trying to talk and explain. She was the one who took our order and I was like we asked before ordering if we could use the deal for all the orders. Then asked if we could do separate transactions for, as the fine print does not state only one deal per customer. She continued to be rude, and cut me off. Asked for the manager who was really nice and she even verified that it does not say one per customer on the ad and fine print. But their in house rules are only 1 deal per customer.

Not the first time I've experienced less that 5 star service from here, but needed to share this encounter.

So $50 worth of smoothies were left on the counter because of the 2nd girls rudeness. We would have still purchased them once it was explained by the manager, but not with how the 2nd...