Smashburger — Restaurant in Natick

I ordered pick up yesterday and food was okay, place looked somewhat clean but the service was awful (not to me, but if the guy at the counter treats other people like this, Im not coming back to this location).

Here’s everything that happened while at this location:

When I come in there’s two people ahead of me waiting, so I patiently wait behind me. The guy at the counter looks at me and talks to me first (So I thought he had helped those people already) The girl before me gets mad that the counter guy ignored her while she can see the food she’s picking up is ready and at the rack in the back. I had to tell the counter guy to help the people before me, it’s not fair if I just came in and I was fine waiting for my turn. He then proceeds to help those people waiting but made it very difficult to them buy “trying” to pretend he didn’t understand their thick accents. I understood EVERYTHING they said, as it was all said in a very slow and clear way, and very understandable even with the accent. After they leave it’s my turn and he pretends to be nice to me and make small conversation and starts talking about how those people where Uber Drivers and how he hates when they come and pick up food because they make his job harder. While he’s talking he’s checking inside my bag to confirm everything is OK but he sees something “wrong”, he yelled very rudely to the kitchen crew (all black) and even cursed at them in front of me. Someone from the kitchen came to check and the order was Okay, the guy at the counter misread something. And he didn’t even offer an apology to the kitchen crew.

Again, all this time he treated me “well” talked to me “nicely” and with respect, but went ahead and mistreated and disrespected the Uber Eats Latinos/Brazilian drivers and yelled and cursed at his black kitchen crew and I won’t go to business who encourage this kind...

TL;DR: Instead of a quick, satisfying lunch, I was treated to a slow, unsatisfying, anxiety ridden experience. My family and I were shopping in Sherwood Plaza and thought Smashburger would be a quick stop for a nice fast-casual burger and fries. We visited about 15 minutes after opening on a Saturday and it was the worst "fast" food experience I've had in a long time. First, there were two groups already seated and waiting for their food. So we were the 3rd group in the store. Our order was taken promptly and then we waited a solid 25 minutes to get our food. So much for "fast". Second, the burger itself was an incredible disappointment (photo attached). I ordered the mushroom truffle burger and there was one, maybe two, mushrooms. Even worse, the burger itself was maybe 1/8th of a pound of meat, and was burned into a tiny little hockey puck that filled less than half the bun. The patty was so small that the swiss cheese slice was burned into swiss cheese "chips" at every corner where the cheese was larger than the burger. Third, the store was filthy. Given the restaurant had just opened for the day, I was left wondering: "does no one clean overnight?" The floor was slick, presumably from grease that had settled over time. But the bathroom took the cake. Words cannot describe the degree of nastiness I encountered here. I'm not sure when the bathroom was last cleaned, but from the log on the door (photo attached), it had not been cleaned since at least 2:30pm the day before (there are no dates on log, so it's possible it had actually been multiple days). Again, the store had just opened for the day, so I'm just assuming no one cleans after closing. Just gross. I can only hope the Natick location is an outlier, because I can't imagine this chain being in business much longer if our experience...

After a tumultuous and frustrating pandemic evening we rushed into your Natick MA location, barely a half hour before closing. We rarely eat out (see pandemic), and were prepared to stumble our way though the ordering process, when we were greeted by a member of your staff named T. At the start of the ordering process I was grateful for his friendly demeanor (despite it being the end of the day), by the middle I was thankful for his patience with my wife's dietary restrictions, and by the end I was guessing that he had to be the owner. Friendly, personable, considerate, I could go on. Later when we returned to pickup the takeout I realized that we hadn't provided a tip (as is customary for us). If there was a step in the checkout process we'd missed it. So in a covert dad way I stealthily pulled a 20 from my wallet and prepared to hand it to him for - in all honesty - making my night. But T would have nothing of it. He politely refused despite my protestations, and after continued offers on my part he indicated that if I was happy with the service then I could comment via the smashfeedback site (and in the process he spread the praise to Stephanie who was handing me our food). This interaction has significantly raised Smash's stock in my estimation.

We are fortunate to live in an area with easily 50 restaurants within a 10 minute drive. Granted Smashburger's food is great but we can find similar fare, but next time we order food I'm going to remember the service we received from T and y'all will be at the top...