Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Pooler

My family and I usually come to this Cracker Barrel once a month regularly over the past few years… but we’re done. Never again. We all made a collective decision after yesterday, that this restaurant doesn’t deserve our hard earned money. Employees complaining of being under staffed before we even sat down… which meant half the tables were blocked off with a half hour wait. Then we get sat, and wait and wait for anyone to even acknowledge us and take our drink order. Now, if they were legitimately busy, I could understand… but they weren’t. Not even close. I sat there watching 4… yes, 4 employees standing there at the hostess areas standing there joking around and laughing for over 15 minutes while we sat at an empty table with no drinks or anything. Multiple other employees just wandering around the front store with nothing to do. I’m sure glad the manager on duty, the guy in the green polo and the tablet, was there to hold up the wall by the kitchen. The guy was literally doing nothing but standing there goofing off on his tablet while every table in our vicinity sat there with nothing to eat or drink. It was mind blowing how that guy has a job honestly. I don’t think he moved more than two steps away from that wall the whole time we were there. Now, even with bad service, I’d look past it if the food was good. But holy moly! Two pancakes for my teen, and the wife and I both got bacon hash brown bowls… almost 40 minutes from the time we ordered… and that was after waiting over 10 minutes just to be acknowledged. At one point, we flagged the server down and asked for beignets thinking we could get those before the food. Nope, never gave them to us, but sure as heck tried to charge us for them. The server puts this garbage food on the table… with this pile of burnt bacon on top of our meals, that’s oddly enough, stone cold. My wife asks for the biscuits that are part of the meal… oh, he’ll be right back. Yeah right. Now, I’m ok with crispy bacon… hey some people are into it. But no one should be serving what was out in front of us. The cook shouldn’t have sent it out, the server shouldn’t have taken out to our table, and the manager should have stopped it from ever getting to us. It was charred to the point of being black. I took one piece and purposely put it on the end of the table for the server to see… right next to our empty glasses, because after being there almost an hour and half, we NEVER even got offered a refill on our drinks. My teen struggles to put butter on her pancakes, because they’re so cold, the butter won’t melt. So we choke down this bad food, and we’re sitting there with no drinks or food left, he finally comes up with these cold biscuits, lol, and tries to put them on the table and apologize. We told him to take them back and just give us the check since we’re done. This dude had the nerve to push the charred burnt bacon to the side, to place the check on our table between our empty glasses, and then just walks off. It was just astoundingly bad service. So we go to the front, and my wife complains about the missing beignets, and the cashier wants to bring the server up front to discuss it. Um, no. Take it off the check and your lazy manager can talk to him. The kid was already doing a poor job, and you want to pull him from the floor and make other customers wait longer? Just overall, one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had at a restaurant. It’s just really sad. We used to like Cracker Barrel and go all the time, but at this point, we won’t be...

Honestly, we love Cracker Barrel, and we get sometimes restaurants have a bad night for certain customers. But there were clearly bigger issues going on at this location. One entire section of the restaurant wasn't being used, yet there was a wait to be seated. My husband ordered fried chicken on salad and was told they were out of fried chicken.. no problem, grilled it is. After a good while waiting, I started to feel sick with a hunger migraine and asked for biscuits - no problem, except they didn't tell our poor server they didn't have any biscuits so he comes back apologetically with corn muffins. I'm grateful for food; migraine recedes almost immediately. We waited probably 40 minutes to an hour for our food. Server was apologetic which was maybe the only good thing about this evening. He was 5 stars, but the service in the kitchen was abysmal so he brought my overall Service rating to 3. We were told we would be comped for the meals and we were grateful for that, as much for the gesture of understanding that this is not really cool for a restaurant to take so long. When the food came out, I was excited because it looked good!! (You'll see the pictures - no way could it be bad now, right?! Well.....) I had a big serving of roast beef, along with Pinto beans and green beans. The beans were hot (yay!), the roast beef was so tough! I only had a butter knife but it was supposed to be "fork-tender" and I've had it so many times and it usually is. Several times I had to be careful because I was afraid of the meat finally giving way to the knife and being flung across the table 😂 It was also barely warm, which honestly makes me a little nervous given their incompetence in the kitchen, and I hope I don't get sick from it. My husband's salad was alright, though smaller than other locations.

It also kinda made me laugh that out of all the meals to be slow to "cook", it's a salad and a roast beef that's been supposedly cooked for like 24 hours or something..... There was only a piece of grilled chicken to cook and some beans to dish out! 😂

ANYWAY. It's so very clear that the management either doesn't know what they're doing, or they do and enjoy watching poor servers try to manage disasters every day........

Oh, and we finally got biscuits .. in a to-go bag because they were only ready after our meal and dessert...

Horrible visit to this location in Pooler. My family has always enjoyed eating at Cracker Barrel but this experience has me baffled and feeling like I was on a prank show but the What Would You Do cameras never appeared. I'm an extremely patient and understanding person and I hardly ever write reviews but when I say this was bad I really mean it was BAD! Where do I start... the total lack of hospitality and professionalism maybe?! We waited nearly 15 minutes to be seated in a mostly empty restaurant. Numerous couples were given preference for being seated and ordering despite our having made a reservation on the app that said 0-5 min wait. Once seated and no sign of a waitress the manager came 20 minutes later and took our dink order and then some time after that with still no waitress the manager took our food order. As 45 minutes goes by we were given our bread and butter. However, we had no silverware to cut or butter them. Upon request of silverware, we were informed that they "ran out of silverware." After an hour with no food and only dry biscuits we resorted to eating potato chips at the table that my mother had bought back from the store after going to the bathroom. Nearing an hour and no sign of our food or a designated waitress to refill our drinks we found ourselves baffled by how bad the experience had been. When we finally got handed silverware we opened it to discover that they handed us dirty silverware. Not just one but nearly all packets were filled with dirty silverware. This was our final straw as well as the fact that we got tired of looking at foil contraptions (later figured out the foil for the new campfire meals) being produced by numerous staff members in the empty area next to us instead of taking care of our needs. When addressing the manager he seemed dumbfounded and unable to handle the situation let alone manage the restaurant properly. After a total of an hour and 20 minutes we left empty bellied and broken hearted that our beloved Cracker Barrel could do...