Culver’s — Restaurant in Ohio

I had been hearing for months nothing but good things about this place. They would say, "the Butter Burgers are to die for." I'll agree to disagree.

While I did assess the quality of meat and ingredients to be high, my burger came to my smashed, with the buns both halfway off of the burger itself, almost cold, and with the condiments and toppings mostly spilled out into the wrapping, making the thing just an absolute mess.

This is on top of the fact that I waited almost 25m for my food. Culver's has what I initially perceived to be a really novel and creative take on drive-thru: they move you really quickly through ordering and paying (if you have 10 cars in front of you expect to wait less than 5 minutes) but after you pay, they give you a sticker with a number on it that you tack to your driver's side-view mirror, and they bring your food out to you. Great! I thought; this way one person's order doesn't jam up the entire line.

Unfortunately, the way this worked out in practice though was that after almost 10 people (who had been BEHIND me in line) received their food before me & drove off, finally I had to ask the courier what the deal was with my order. I will say this first: She was VERY sweet, and so was the woman at the drive-thru window. Incredibly polite; think Chick-fil-A type manners/ordering experience.

When she got back to me though, she admitted that the barely high school -aged kid I saw running orders out along side her, had given my food to the car directly in front of me, and so instead of waiting 25 minutes like I ended up doing, it should have been more something like 2 or 3 minutes (and I know this because the car that was directly in front of me in line ended up parking in the waiting space that was also directly in front of me, and it took 3, 4 minutes top for her to get her order, and at the time I even remember thinking, "Wow, that's a LOT of bags for just two girls in a truck." The kid who handed them MY food, again, looked somewhere around 12, and looked like he didn't have a clue where he even was.

And that's why I didn't totally trash Culver's in this review. Almost every single part of the experience was perfect, except for that one kid almost single-handedly ruining everything, and although that sucked, I'm not the type of reviewer to not be able to differentiate between one dinkus gen z employee, and the rest of his team who are all working their a**es off.

My last point of criticism is this: Since they had already colossally goofed up my order; wouldn't you assume that they would have at least made sure to serve me hot food? And not a complete mess of a cheeseburger barely held together by a wrapper? Again, the food was OK. Nothing I'd write home about.

To me, this restaurant seems more about following the Chick-fil-A model and ensuring customers a nice experience as opposed to serving super bomb diggidy delicious food (ironic, I know, given my experience). Having said that however, I have yet to return since that first experience, and have no idea if being served HOT food, and on TIME, would at all change my assessment of the quality. And until I do so, my review stars will stay where they are. I certainly hope you, dear reader, have a better experience at...

Every single time this location screws up the order. this time it was the simplest order a sundae and pretzel bites. But they were serving people 4 and 5 spots by behind me. Letting my sundae melt by the time I got it It was completely liquid. There's no solid ice cream left in it. The pretzel bites were burnt!!! And then they charged me for that disgusting not-cheese sauce even though i did not want or request it. Third complete fail for this location. NEVER GIVING THEM A CHANCE AGAIN. EDIT: Response to the owner... I fully stated the situation above (on 6/3/2024). it was posted the night it happened. as i sat in the parking lot after throwing my order uneaten into the trash bin to the left of the entrance. it was not long before the store would be closing for the night. if there is any other info you need i will add it here. I'm 100% done w/ culvers in the Toledo area, and am most certainly not going to the website. sorry but no point. i do not want free anything or my money back, I just want to warn fellow diners that they can not trust this franchise in this area.. orders should be made and given to the customers in the order they are placed/received. maybe have a cheat sheet to mark the parking places of the car w/ the right sticker number so the runner isn't hitting every car in the lot before circling back to ones they missed? Employees should know not to serve melted frozen goods or burnt anything.. it seems...

Don’t bother placing a curbside order here because you’ll wait and wait and wait until you finally decide to go in, just to find it sitting on the counter getting cold.

I ordered ahead for 1:30 today. Arrived in my curbside spot and hit the “I’m Here” button in the email right at 1:30. I waited until 1:55 before finally giving up and going in. I let an employee know I had been waiting nearly a half hour - no apologies, nothing. Just grabbed my bag off the counter and handed it to me. I let him know I had custard too, which he then grabbed off the counter. Cold food and melted custard, awesome!

Got home to find my entire order was inaccurate. One burger was supposed to be plain with just cheese and bacon. It had cheese, bacon and lettuce. The other was supposed to have cheese, bacon, lettuce and ketchup. Instead it had cheese, one piece of bacon and mustard. The concrete mixer we ordered was supposed to be cookie dough, instead it’s something crunchy. I drove 20 minutes to get it, so I definitely wasn’t going back. Guess I’m just out the $30+ spent on this meal and 90 minutes of my day.

This location has consistently been awful, but we tried to chalk it up to it being newer. At this point...