Panda Express — Restaurant in Orlando

Not sure how a fast food place with 8-10 employees could work so slowly but they do. There is no rhyme or reasoning to how the employees operated. I don't mind waiting but these employees look empty & dead. Obviously no management there. They barely speak to you also. 1 employee boxed food for the guest in front of us while another employee made what looked like to go orders. Then that employe rang up the other guest. Another employee boxed up a guest in front of us and they walked away after. We waited then after a few min another employee came and took our order. She looked put out because her coworkers just went on to do whatever. She boxes our stuff. Then puts it at the end by the register then just walks away. She then starts cleaning the line. There's a guest a head of us still waiting to be rung up. They still have guests behind us in line that aren't being helped or spoken to. 1 employee is just hanging by the bathroom & soda machine. Employees hiding by drive thru. The only employees working with hustle were the cooks. We waited 5 min for this employee to slowly move over and ring us up. It took 3 min for him to bag our food and key in our order etc. We had 2 bowls & a drink with spring rolls. Then he forgot to give us our cup & looked annoyed when we asked for our cup. Literally so many problems with this location. Your employees should stay in 1 designated spot while on shift. Drive thru doing drive thru, register person at the register, to go person doing to go orders, expo person on the line, etc. Everything would be quicker & run smoother. Right now it's like your employees just walk around doing whatever then mid doing it just quit & customers have to wait till someone finishes what the 1st employee started. We started out wanting to dine in but by the time we finally got rang up I'm glad he bagged it to go. This location needs new management that will manage & the crew to be replaced. It's gone to far now...

11:45am May 19,2018.

Staff was nice.

Food wasn’t. I worked for Panda Express for 5 years and was at her position for 3 of those years. I came to this panda on my lunch break knowing panda’s standards for food. That’s where issues came.

I ordered the fried rice with chow mein, Orange chicken, sweet fire, and string bean chicken.

Here are my concerns:

Having all the food “fresh” the string beans were cut way too long and inconsistently. The string beans were shriveled up and dry, not fresh. Recipe calls for 5 seconds in the fryer, 1 second in the water to wash off the string bean. then toss it in with the chicken with the sauce and finalize with sesame oil. Not to mention the sauce had almost no consistency as it was missing cornstarch or the cook didn’t mix the sauce. The sauce is supposed to coat the chicken not sit at the bottom like a pool.

Orange chicken sauce was burned and had no chili paste or orange extract taste. The chicken wasn’t even coated all the way as well and it made the chicken taste horrible.

The sweet fire chicken is the one you “can’t mess up” it’s bagged preñare chicken out on the fried then coated in the sweet fire sauce, seems like the never heated it up.

Teriyaki sauce was runny and tasteless. No cornstarch and a bad base was made from the beginning.

The rice tasted like it had no salt and the chow mein was dry and had no mix of the chow mein mix. No basic sauce.

Food was at the worst standards. I wish this panda was up to standards when it comes to the food. i was horribly disappointed.

Overall I paid 10$ to throw away my food. This is a disappointment. Probably won’t be going to any more pandas after this, panda just keeps getting lower and less experienced “cooks” or just horrible training from managers as cooks come in with no experience and try to learn everything. The inconsistency is horrible. If you don’t quit panda, at least just don’t go...

------------UPDATE BELOW------------

Two stars exclusively for the FOOD. Which I could get at any other location of PE. This one in particular very rarely has the online order even started until you walk in (multiple times I walked in 15 minutes after because I know it's almost never ready on time, and it STILL wasn't even started until I asked), which as you can assume is quite the inconvenience when you are expecting to be in and out, as is the entire idea behind online order pick-ups.

As with most teams there can be some bad eggs in the ranks. This location is no exception. There are, of course, a few employees who are actually trying and are being helpful and pleasant, which is GREAT. But... Then there are a few who just aren't trying, apparently. Not calling anyone out, but I can tell from the last few times that I've come in, if I see one or two specific people fulfilling my ('normally' 15 minute late) online order, I know to double check everything in that bag. Because 9/10 times it will be wrong or missing a part of the meal entirely.

I know I can order when I get there and it would take only a little longer, but I'm usually ordering for more than one person, and this is the easiest way for us to order.

On top of all this, I've called 5 times since the last order issue (today) and no answer after a full minute of trilling)

It's just really upsetting because I love their food. I just shouldn't have to struggle with getting it on time and correctly.. -------------------------*-

I was able to get through to the store a few hours later. The manager did offer to replace/refund the meal the next time I came through since I kept the receipt, which is great. I'll keep this at two stars, however, since it took about eight tries to get anyone on the phone at all. Thank you to Elly, for...