Habit Burger & Grill — Restaurant in Pasadena

I've been eating at The Habit since I moved to CA in 1987. Ventura was the first spot, then Camarillo, but when I moved from Camarillo, I didn't go back to The Habit for a while.

We moved to Pasadena in 2017 and lo and behold, there's a Habit a few blocks away!

First, I'll start with the food. I like their burgers - even more than In-N-Out. It's not as good as the higher end burger joints like Smash Burger, Shake Shack or Hook Burger, but the price isn't as high either. So, for the money, I think it's a good place to grab a burger. Five stars for the food!

Second, we'll move on to the staff. There's one worker who is good. We've seen her there many times and of the two gals there, she's the only one who seems to care about doing a good job. Five stars for her. The rest of the staff isn't very good. Okay, here's some history - back in high school, i had an after school job at Wendy's. They taught me how to work and why the customer is so important. I remember seeing staff get fired when a customer complained about them. Yes, it was that serious! I've been to many Habit stores and their staff is good to very good. In fact, a couple weeks ago we at The Habit somewhere out east (Ontario or somewhere out there). The staff was great and we'd definitely go back. I'm going to write about the staff at the Pasadena store in more detail - please read the next paragraph.

Since we've been coming to the store in Pasadena, we've been very disappointed in the staff. Some of the gals working at the front counter are rude and they act as if they're doing you a favor for taking your order. The people cooking the food are not great either - slow and they sure like talking to each other! The guy that cleans tables is okay. The man who I think is the manager isn't very good - I think he's the reason for the poor service. Most times we'll go to the kiosk to order, because the gal taking the order is so bad and we're rather not deal with her. Back to the details. Last week, we wanted to grab a burger for dinner. We decided on The Habit, because it's close and we like the food. We ordered at the kiosk (we saw the girl we didn't like at the front desk), put our phone number in and waited for our food. And waited. And waited. A good 10 minutes passed, so I assumed they made the food and didn't text us. Nope, the cook had just put patties on the grill. I told the gal (the one we don't like) that we still haven't received our food. She found the order and told me it would be a few more minutes. I noticed that there were trays with fries and other fired food just sitting there getting cold. When the burgers were done, the gal put them on the correct tray. She stood there waiting for the cook to finish each burger as our food was sitting on the tray. She knew I was waiting, yet she just stood there waiting for the cook to finish. Of course, she was chit chatting with him the whole time.

I sure wish someone from the corporate office would go to this store (during dinner) and secret shop them.

For us, I've had enough of this terrible service. I'll eat at other Habit stores, but I'm going to avoid this one. I'll pay a little more and eat at Hook Burger (it's also very close) or go to In N Out.

I do not recommend this...

Eats: Double Char lettuce wrapped. I've eaten here before and tried the other favorites such as the Mushroom Swiss Char, Sweet Potato Fries, and Onion Rings. It was the Monday lunch hour and the place was pretty occupied but not crowded by any means. The Double Char lettuce wrap was a solid 4 star with good flavor from the beef, and a balanced flavor pairing between the grilled onions and American cheese. My lettuce wrap could also be eaten by hand versus fork and spoon, which means the chef made sure that I could hold it up like a burger without all the contents leaking everywhere. It could have probably have the added flavor benefit from a sauce (think special spread from other chains), besides the standard mayo, but it was still tasty.

So why did this place get 5 stars instead of 4? Customer service. At the conclusion of my meal, Employee Yari came by and offered to throw away my tray. She asked how the food was and I responded that it was great and went down pretty fast (I got a lettuce wrap). Rightfully so, she interpreted this as I wasn't satisfied with my meal. She promptly offered to bring me another burger to see if I could be more satisfied. I did not take that offer because my stomach was done for the meal, but just to see this type of customer service helps you believe that the employees truly care about their customers' experience at The Habit. While I may still venture to other burger joints in the area, this place wins me...

More like Frantic Food than fast food. I usually go to Habit a few times a year when I’m short on time between jobs or appointments, and I’ve always had a good experience up until yesterday. The restaurant was busy and very noisy, but there was no one in line when I walked up to the counter. Even so, the clerk walked away in the middle of taking my order, telling another employee to take over. I must have looked surprised at his lack of courtesy because he then came back to finish taking my order. After a very long wait, my order was finally ready. Taking a look in the bag, I could see they didn’t give me what I ordered. The same clerk implied that I ordered wrong, rather than he made a mistake because of not being able to hear me over the noise or his leaving in the middle of taking my order. So… he remade my veggie burger, leaving the fries on the counter to get cold. After another long wait, I got the replacement burger and left. When I got to my destination and opened the order with very little time left to eat it, I saw that they hadn’t included the “sweet mustard sauce” (I asked for it on the side, but it was nowhere to be found), and the burger was super small. The “grilled onions” didn’t resemble what I remember from prior visits, just granules with no flavor. All this for $17.56! Disappointed to lose what used to...