Sonny's BBQ — Restaurant in Palatka

While making a stop in Palatka, I called the restaurant to place a curbside pickup order, not realizing that unlike our local Sonny's, there was a good way to order online from the Palatka restaurant website. I must say I was a little annoyed to find out that I could not place an order over the phone until I waited seven minutes on hold after first saying I was calling to place a curbside pickup order, but at least the site was well designed and easy to order from. When we arrived at the restaurant, the phone number was on a sign to check in for curbside pickup, but the call would not go through until after several attempts, upon which I was routed to "on hold" without speaking to an employee first. Eventually, after about ten minutes on hold, I was routed to a voicemail asking me to leave my number for a call back. In retrospect, I should have just eaten the bill without getting the meal and tried to get my money back later, or contest with my credit card company if need be, but since they already had my money, I went into the lobby to to spend ten minutes among the maskless, since it seemed to be the only apparent way to get our meal. (At least the staff wore masks, although not all the customers did.) Obviously, I ordered curbside specifically to avoid such a situation. When I finally got our meal, two hamburger "Big Deals," my wife pointed out that they did not have drinks when I got back to the car with them. I had to go back into the lobby AGAIN for the drinks, which I only got brought to me one at a time. By the time we got to the meal, about half an hour after we first arrived at the restaurant and it was presumably ready for us, to say it was lukewarm would probably be a little too generous, although there was a little telltale warmth left suggesting it had actually been cooked when we ordered, so to say it was stone cold would not be accurate, either. Unfortunately, the burgers were totally plain. My wife first noticed that hers came with a bun instead of garlic bread as ordered, and had no pickles or ketchup, despite the fact that I wrote "pickles and ketchup only" in the special instructions field of the well designed order website. I had to double check the menu to verify that yea verily, my burger was supposed to come with lettuce, tomato, and onion since it was not special ordered. We couldn't even put any ketchup or other condiments on the burgers from the packets that most other restaurants provide automatically, because there were none provided for our visit today. Burgers we have ordered from other Sonny's restaurants have been among the best served by popular chain restaurants, but my wife said her medium burger was really dry and she didn't even finish it. Mine, ordered medium-rare, while plain, cold, and otherwise underwhelming, at least was not disgusting. To their credit, they did give us the sidekicks (cold) that we actually ordered (they were not both fries), but I think that correctly filling one out of three components for each meal is a pretty low bar. Worst....

I am not from Palatka, and I stopped here to get some “good” BBQ on my road trip home. I absolutely love Sonny’s and have been eating at the franchise my whole life. This location was a complete and utter let down and an embarrassment to the Sonny’s franchise. We placed a to-go order of two big-deal turkey sandwiches and waited for almost 20 minutes just for them to tell us that they were sold out of turkey. We then asked for a refund so we could get back on the road, but the takeout employee (Adrianna) said that the manager must do this refund from her computer. After waiting 11 minutes with no word, I asked Adrianna if she knew the status of my refund so I could get back on the road. She said that her manager was still in her office and that she didn’t know anything. After waiting around for another 5 minutes, I walked up to another employee to explain what was going on, and she offered to help. Within 1 minute, this server resolved the situation. I wish Adrianna was more helpful since I had a long drive home and now I had to stop at another restaurant for dinner. I couldn’t believe that the manager did not have the courtesy to come out and apologize for my incompetence. It is so sad that the customer service was so poor at this location. After being a loyal Sonny’s customer for over several decades, we have never been treated like this. I stop at this location often on my way home from roadtrips but I will never...

3/11/2021

I placed an online order tonight for Sonny's BBQ and to my surprise my whole meal had been comped, which my family and I are especially grateful for. After speaking with the manager previously I understand better that my previous bad experience was something that couldn't be helped, and as such I don't hold the company accountable. Sonnys is still in my opinion the best BBQ place in Palatka, and im thankful that the restaurant took such good care of the situation.

2/20/21

I normally have no problems with Sonnys BBQ, but having spent 40 minutes waiting in the drive through line, waiting for one vehicle to be taken care of im a little angry.

Aside from spending the greater part of an hour from the time I ordered my food until the time I paid, 3 other vehicles left the queue, I was offered no explanation, no apology for the excessive wait, and my order was incorrect.

I was given a normal pulled pork sandwich when I ordered a make it meatier sliced pork sandwich (was still charged for the extra meat which I wasn't given). My second order was on the wrong type of bread, the sweet tea tasted like pure sugar, and the bread was all room temperature.

Now I love Sonnys BBQ, but its going to be a long time before I can see myself...