Tropical Smoothie Cafe — Restaurant in Roanoke

Was a frequent visitor/customer for years, and now I’ll just be glad when this location FINALLY shuts down. 🤷🏽‍♂️

For a place that specializes in smoothies with state of the art blenders, you’d think they’d be able to deliver consistent quality smoothies to the customer. But the inconsistent service and food quality here has been out of control for a couple of years now. I literally have to cross my fingers and pray that my smoothie is made correctly every time before ordering! And I personally feel like a lot of my issues come from this location being overrun by careless teenagers who don’t really value the customer at all.

My last experience was the final straw. I placed an online order for pickup, pulled up to the restaurant exactly at my pickup time, and as usual, they were ‘still working on it’. So I wait about a minute or two, and when I finally do get handed my smoothie, I immediately noticed it looked lumpy (it’s called a “smoothie” for a reason…). So I asked the employee could she reblend it for me, and upon my request, she did. But when she handed it back to me, she didn’t even have the decency to wipe the cup down from some of the smoothie that had gotten on it from when she poured it back into the cup. Now normally I wouldn’t have too big of an issue with something like this, but they didn’t even have napkins in any of their napkin dispensers for me to simply do it myself. 🤦🏽‍♂️ So I just walk out the restaurant, make it back to my car, ripped open the straw to taste my smoothie, and I immediately noticed the whey tasted like it was missing. So I walk back into the restaurant and asked her if she could remake it, and she told me that she was unable to. I explained to her that I’ve had plenty of smoothies remade in the past due to them being made wrong so what’s wrong with it being remade now? And she told me, it’s a new rule her district manager made up about two weeks ago. 😐 So I told her, okay, I’ll just contact support about it, and she rudely talked over me mid sentence by telling me, well you do whatever you need to do then! Furious with the service I received, I contact customer support about my issue, and I haven’t heard back from them yet, and it’s been almost a week since the incident happened! 😪

Count your days, Tropical. 🏝️

Edit: Customer service eventually did in fact reach back out to me to express their concerns and refunded me for my order. They also reiterated that due to a new policy created by their district manager, they no longer are able to remake customized smoothies because it’s not promised to taste to standards in comparison to how it’s made by default. But my biggest gripes with this is, regardless if the smoothie is customized or not - I, the customer, know when my customized smoothie is appetizing, and I know when it’s not. I’ve been getting the same customized smoothie for years, I’m just not getting a consistent experience anymore. And secondly, if you’re gonna create this “new policy” for customized smoothies, then this policy needs to be stated in the Tropical Smoothie mobile app. Preferably somewhere near the customization options, or anywhere else conveniently applicable for the customer. Otherwise it leaves room for...

Update: Visit today 2/11- I chose to continue to give your team a try instead of taking the option of contacting you via your website, in hopes of maybe your staffing at this location has gotten better, but here we are. Today, I have reached an all-time disappointment with a company because of "General Manager Clara." If she is the general manager, I'm no longer curious as to why this tropical smoothie is consistently the worst cafe/restaurant I've ever been to. I submitted the details of todays "utterly jaw-droppingly poor customer service experience" experience on their website. TLDR; Clara consistently over spoke me asking for contact information, missing half of what I was asking her about our audio clarity, seemingly to cause her frustration with me to grow even higher. If people are in "general management" positions, they should generally understand how to manage their behavior with customers. I also had a visit on 2/7 where my smoothie was so incredibly chunky throughout that I have no idea if the whey protein was added (it's usually much less sweet and lighter in color with it) and it wasn't even drinkable through the straw. I've added that picture.

Placed a pickup order for one smoothie bowl. I had to wait a little bit for it to be ready so I went to the car wash. I arrived to pick up the bowl, at the drive-thru, and the employee politely informed me that corporate doesnt allow them to allow customers to pick up their orders via the drive-thru. It would've been helpful to know that "policy" before or while placing my order. DoorDash is for convenience and accessibility - this "policy" is obviously not...

Ugh - I am so frustrated with the Brandon Road location! The wait times and service are very poor and the onsite manager is rude, the two young employees will not learn good customer service skills from her. On several occasions the wait time in the drive thru was 20 minutes for a single smoothie. This time I ordered online the system said my order would be ready in 10 minutes. Took about 15 minutes to get there and people in front of me were waiting and several folks with online orders came in behind me. No one's order was ready when they arrived and the drive thru was full. After waiting about 10 minutes I received my smoothie and asked about the rest of the order and the employee looked at me and didn't respond. I sat for 20 more minutes at the bar in front of the manager and she ignored me and every other customer that entire time. She did talk on the phone though. Several people left. Meanwhile, the employee cooking the meals just kept stacking them up behind the manager. Finally I leaned across the counter and asked the manager if she would check the stack of bags behind her and see if my food was ready. No sorry for the wait, no thanks for your patience. If I wanted to sit for 25-30, I'd go to a nice sit down restaurant. It's a shame, the food is pretty good and it's a busy location - the employees and management really need to improve their customer service skills and pick up the pace during...