McDonald's — Restaurant in Manassas

I frequently visit this McDonalds as it's the closest one to my home. In general, I've found the cleanliness here lacking (there are frequently flies around the soda / condiments station), but my visit this evening was particularly disappointing. When we entered the store, approximately 8PM, there were very few customers in the store, and it did not seem busy. I immediately noticed a soda / drink spill in between the cash register and soda / condiment area. Additionally, I noticed two tables with the remains from previous customers' meals. There were also (again) flies in drink / condiment area, which also had several soda spills and condiment spills on the counter top. We placed our order, and waited for our food, which was ready fairly quickly. It was generally on par with McDonalds food, but I did note the fries and nuggets were luke warm. During our entire time in the restaurant, the spill on the floor and the mess at the condiment stations went unaddressed, aside from a single wet floor cone placed at the spill. No effort at all to clean it up, and I noted the restaurant was still quite slow. Perhaps not promptly cleaning such spills is what's leading to the fly problem? I decided that I should alert the franchisee to how this place is being run, so I went to look at the paperwork at the front of the restaurant. I was surprised to learn from the paperwork at front that 1. The restaurant was a corporate location as opposed to a franchise, and 2. The permit to operate issued by the county health department displayed at the front of the store expired in December of 2018. I brought these issues to the attention of the manager, but he seemed generally uninterested. Let's face it, McDonalds isn't exactly great food. But I go there as I generally get a consistent experience (a Big Mac tastes the same no matter where in the country you go), and I generally can be confident that the food is prepared in a manner that is safe for consumption. Unfortunately, due to the continued ongoing cleanliness issues I've seen there in the past, coupled with the conditions I observed today I no longer have that confidence in this location. If what they're willing to show me up front to my face is unsanitary conditions, a staff uninterested in correcting them, and an expired permit from the health department... What's going on where I can't see, like in the kitchen? Is the meal I just ate going to make me sick? Will it make my five year old sick? Frankly, I'm not willing to risk it, and will likely not patronize this location...

Lowered review from 5 to 2 stars... They still make a killer Orea McFlurry but the food quality has deteriorated and the staff that attended us today had issues with including sauces we ordered and failed to let us know they had no ranch for chicken nuggets when we ordered them, I would have not ordered if we knew. The Buttermilk Chicken sandwich had a tiny dried up chicken patty, very old lettuce and 2 tiny pieces of tomato. So switching to the Pensilvania Ave location near Target in Snowden Village.

I don’t mind waiting when busy, but getting orders wrong, not advising of out of stock items before paying, not providing all items ordered, and serving low quality food is unacceptable. So taking one star out for each of those failures.

Previous 5 star review The food seems to taste better here compared to the other 4 MDs I’ve reviewed in the Manassas/Dale City area.

They do get busy in rush hour and tend to take a bit longer, but I don’t mind waiting if they are courteous and friendly even under rush hour stress.

Since they have walk in orders, drive through, mobile orders and to eat in, with either take out, curb side pickup, or mobile order with drive through pick up these poor folks have a lot more combinations to manage for serving food, so I’m sure it’s stressful, so be patient and kind.

Out of the 5 MDs in Manassas/ Dale Blvd I can tell you the 2 on East Manassas are not very good (Liberia/Centreville Rd by CVS, this one in Dumfries Rd is very good, but please be nice and patient if they are busy, it takes both good service and our patience to have a good meal. I’m always nice if I see that people are trying and have a good attitude regardless...

Update: been back to this location a few more times, and while they still don’t always get the order correct, multiple people pronounced my name correctly this last visit, so I decided I should give them a few more stars, keep it up and you may even get to 5 some day(maybe fix the broken screens that make the place feel like something from black mirror to get the atmosphere rating up) Not sure what happened here, it used to be when this McDonald’s made a mistake and you had to come back for them to get you the correct food, they would throw in an extra fries or a pie or something and apologize for the mistake. Instead, today, they handed me a bag with the correct food and didn’t say anything, no apology or extra item to make up for their mistake. I left and went back to my car to leave, but decided that was not good enough customer service, and went back in to demand a refund, the manager threw away my receipt and couldn’t find my order so she refunded me for the single item I came back for, and instead of causing a scene I decided that was enough, and that a negative review may be more impactful. This was a negative experience for a McDonalds that used to be more reliable, I can only hope they improve their...