Portillo's Normal — Restaurant in Normal

Since being purchased by Berkshire Hathaway Portillo's has seen a number of changes, some good and some not so good. The food quality has always been very good and remains so. They didn't invest a billion dollars to change what was their bread and butter (pun intended). Some things have been added to the menu, like chicken fingers for example, which are very good. One of the things that has changed is the attention to detail. When you special order something it doesn't always come out the way you asked for it. That's especially true with online orders where you can be very specific. We travel a lot and know where we can find a Portillo's along the way. I use the very well designed app and order a chopped salad for my wife every time we are headed from St Louis to the Chicago area. That means Normal, Illinois is a usual pit stop for us. I special order it just the way she likes it. No onion, no red cabbage, substitute the cheeses and ranch dressing instead of the house. 3 out of the last 4 times they have gotten some aspect of the special order wrong, or they have forgotten the bread. Oh no... don't ever forget the bread! Come on! Pay attention, dot the i's and cross the t's. Problem is we are already back on I-55 and aren't real interested in coming back to get the issue fixed. So, we have learned to check the order before we leave even though we are in a bit of a hurry most times, and if there's an issue we are there to get it fixed, which of course takes even more time. This last time they didn't get the dressing right so I went in and this time I asked to speak with the manager. A very nice, polite handlebar mustachioed gentleman came over and I explained to him what we had experienced recently and that I thought he, as a manager, would like to know. He whole heartedly agreed, apologized for what we had been experiencing and told me he was a regional trainer and would be focusing on this with their teams in multiple locations. Good, no... Great! Thus the 5-stars for service. We will continue to come back because, well, it's Portillo's after all. When are you coming to the St. Louis area? We need your quality of...

Food is generally pretty consistent. I've only had a couple of mistakes in several years of going here fairly regularly. That's usually drive through, once in a while inside. Today I ordered online, and things went poorly.

When you walk into the store, there's a huge neon sign which says "pick up online orders here." I waited there for several minutes, ad nobody looked over. They've built a big wall which separates that from the rest of the restaurant, so nobody sees you over there. After a while, I walked over to the main register and asked. The cashier didn't now what to do, so he sent me off with an incredibly unhelpful woman in a bandana. She said two meet her over there. So I went back to the sign / catering order register. She never showed up. But after a moment, I heard "online order forced Danny" shouted from the distance. There she was, standing behind some mobile shelving with a second tiny sign about online orders l, pointing at my order like she was annoyed at me. She gave me one final disdainful look and walked away without a word.

Apparantly, people are expected to know that the huge friggin neon sign is a lie; everyone should ignore that and instead continue looking around for a second smaller sign which blends into the background and might be behind a crowd of people. Further, I guess expecting staff to help when someone is confused is clearly unreasonable.

The kids outside are pretty much all really friendly. I've had some fun conversations waiting at the window. But one horrible person inside (I assume a shift leader or something) left me with a really bad taste. I'm not sure if I'll come back here after this; it's definitely...

Don’t waste your money going here. You have a 50-50 chance that you will be missing items, your order will be inedible, or a complete mess. I placed an order for three sandwiches and two fries. I Received one sandwich and two fries, which were cold. I called The restaurant and was directed to DoorDash. When I called DoorDash they offered me a refund until they discovered I ordered off of the Portillo’s website. I was told I needed to get a refund through them. I tried to get replacement items, but I was told they could not do that because they were closing in 30 minutes. I requested a refund since I received 1/3 of my order and the portion I received was cold. I was told I would be receiving a refund in 2 to 3 business days. I ended up throwing the fries in the trash and splitting my one cold sandwich with my child and cooking my own frozen fries at 10:30 at night. I was prompted by email to complete a survey. When I gave the details of my order above , I was given a credit of two sandwiches that I thought would be in addition to my refund. I never received my refund as promised. When I contacted customer service, I was told I was given a credit that was “compensation and a gesture of good will”. My idea of customer service is not making an additional trip to get my “2 free sandwiches” that I already paid for and never received or the 2 orders of cold fries I threw in the trash. This “good will” equaled 1/3 of the value of my total order. I paid $61 for one cold sandwich and 2 cold fries. The whole 61 dollar order was trash and Portillo’s thinks that two free sandwiches is more than an adequate response....