Culver’s — Restaurant in Madison

I tried giving this place another shot after my last visit went sour with some young, rebellious, inattentive staff giving my visit a hard time but I unfortunately haven't seen much improvement after a few visits when I was treated to a meal and seen no improvement to the welcoming and attentive attitude of the young staff. I like burgers but I'd also like it if it felt like they gave a flip. Who knows, maybe down the line things will change, but I dunno

Edit, August 31, Monday, 2020, 3:07P.M.

For some reason my most recent review was removed for obvious reason. I went into the establishment to order some food with coupons we got in the mail. Upon ordering my roommate received some inappropriate comments and intolerable behavior and hate towards her which is highly and absolutely unacceptable. If it weren't for the fact that such an encounter soured my taste to this particular Culvers, we also both received food poisoning when we were both having to use the restroom constantly and had stomach pains.

This is disappointing. And I loved Culvers. But now that love is starting to fade, especially with this establishment that allows such behavior previously to continue on like this. Unacceptable. Not a safe space for all either

Edit, December 18, 2020 @ 7:27P.M.

God knows why my roommate wanted to return to this establishment again after receiving the hate she did but she was willing to forgive and forget to quell a craving for Culvers. Despite my objections, she was willing to give them another try. Returning here to place an order for her, already received some poor service, obviously if I have two drinks or more I should get a cup holder which I didn't, so I had to ask. Observing what was going on, rarely do their employees respect social distancing of 6-10 feet. Though its more to blame on close and compact spaces. Also asked for a big bag of which to carry it all home and upon receiving my order in a paper bag without it I had to ask again begrudgingly. Bringing the order home we got no ranch packets. A few bites in and I notice the burger is at most medium well and was definitely undercooked in the middle, so I had to cook it some more in our microwave. Some time afterward, nature calls violently for the both of us and I'd say at most we constantly had to use the bathroom for two hours after what is clearly food poisoning.

We didn't visit them for over three months and...

tldr: This is technically a Culver’s, but with the food, staff, and atmosphere of a foreclosed K-Mart.

I am genuinely concerned for humanity that this particular establishment has anything higher than a 2 star rating - the issues are nonstop and I’ve eaten here so many times. Today was just finally bad enough to leave a review.

It’s at least a half hour wait to get anything, no matter time of day or what you order. There will certainly be 4-5 different family’s children inside having a hunger induced fit because they have also been waiting for 25 minutes at that point.

It doesn’t matter if you use the drive through or eat inside - your order is going to be incorrect, if you get anything at all. Don’t bring it back to the employees though, because outside of one dude - it will somehow always be exclusively new employees literally every single time and they definitely don’t know what to do.

The place appears to be busy, based on the number of cars in the parking lot, but it has to be exclusively employees’ cars because there’s never anyone in the building itself, outside of dinner time.

It’s my own fault for continuing to go here after what has to be at least ten consecutive bad experiences, but when a picky kid will eat something; you sort of have to deal with it. I’d rather my child eat something and I don’t get any food than him scream at me. When it’s his special night to pick, who am I to deprive him of something anyone can make better (grilled cheese)?

All this being said, I must be in some sort of alternate reality where these issues only plague this location when I’m there and never any other time. I hope I’m simply cursed and others enjoy this location, but I think they finally broke me this time.

In all seriousness though, it’s always a half hour at the shortest from ordering to receiving food - at best. You think one of the times a manager or someone would address the throngs of unhappy people and maybe offer a free scoop of custard or something, but I’m not sure this location has management or leadership. It might just sort of exist as a leaderless organism - and that would make more sense than whatever they are doing at this location.

Do...

Original review Oct 2021 This Culver’s location is very close to my house. We have had very inconsistent service here, particularly when attempting to use the “curdside” pick-up. We frequently have a situation where we press the notification in the email that we’re there, and then wait and wait while a massive line of drive-thru customers are waited on and leave. We press the alert again and still nothing.

It happened again tonight. I went in after waiting 20 minutes and our order was sitting bagged up and ready. My fish and onion rings were sort of old and not very hot and my husband’s salad was kind of warm. At least this time, the order was complete and correct; just undelivered.

We have a problem of some type about 40% of the time we come here. I’m not sure if it’s equipment failure, training failure, organizational failure, or what, but it’s kind of infuriating. Why offer the “curdside” service if you can’t consistently fulfill the orders in a timely fashion? And I wouldn’t mind waiting in a busy spell to get fresh hot food, but getting food that has been on the shelf waiting for 20 minutes is really no fun. Please work out the problems and get it right, Culver’s!

Edited to say that I had a call from the restaurant manager last night. It appears that they have a technical glitch with the patron check-in notification and that management was maybe unaware of how often this happens. I hope they can resolve it. He said he would mail me coupons to make up for the bad experience. Edited again 10/13/22 We continue to experience various frustrations at this Culver’s location, to the point that it is more remarkable to have a transaction go correctly than wrong. Tonight I got home with an order for four adults only to discover that my cod dinner had not been included. At this point I think I need to accept that if I want Culver’s, I should drive up to...