A&W Restaurant — Restaurant in Salem

First off, I'm not used to giving poor reviews, so that alone should tell you something.

My wife and I were just looking for a snack during an outing, and thought a quick trip through a drive through would be fine. We saw an ad on Google for this A & W, and even though the stars were low, we thought we would give it a chance.

Pulling up there was a fairly long line of cars, but we were not in a hurry so we decided to wait. I noted the time, 215pm, because we had been debating whether to do something else and decided against it as it was too early for our plans.

The line wasn't moving, so I put the car in park, while my wife fiddled with her phone, reading me some news. After a few short articles, I mentioned that we hadn't moved at all and 10 minutes had passed. At this point I could tell something was wrong, but I still wanted to give the store a chance do we waited a few more minutes and the line finally moved... One car length.

Could I have left the lane? Sure. It would have been easy enough based on the position I was in. Should I have left the lane? Based on what came next, I really should have, to but darn it I like A&W and wanted to like this place.

After the line finally started to move, each car took several minutes before they would move forward. It wasn't that orders were complex or anything, it just took a long time to process at the check out window. I know this because when it was my turn to order at the call box, I ordered just two things, a six piece wings with buffalo sauce and a large cheese curds with spicy papa sauce. The girl that took my order was pleasant and she repeated my order back to me perfectly. She's said she's would give me my total when I came to the pickup window. The line then moved slowly forward, one car at a time until I finally reached the pick-up window.

It took 45 minutes from first getting in the line to get to that window, and when the next (or possibly same) friendly girl greeted me she asked if I had the 14 piece order... I said no, and told her what my order was, and a brief flicker of panic crossed over her face. She handled it well though and after a few moments behind a now closed pick-up window, she came back with a pencil or crayon (it smudged in the rain) and a blank receipt tape. She quickly jotted down my order, and then took my payment card. Eventually it seemed like things were in order, but it was now passing the 50 minute mark and I still had nothing to show for time. She's asked me to pull ahead and wait and they would be right out with my order.

I pulled ahead into a parking spot, and hoped it would be a quick wait, though it seemed like they were having this sort of tricky situation with everyone.

It was 10 more minutes before I saw the girl poke her head out of the door and look for me, so I got out of my car to get my order.

I checked the receipt and while the main items where correct the spicy papa sauce I asked for was listed as ranch. I knew my wife would be fine with that too, so it wasn't a big deal, until we checked the bag and there was no sauce at all to be found! I laughed out loud at the absurdity of the situation.

Putting everything up to this point aside, as I know we all can have those days where systems crash, or power fails, shipments don't come in, or fellow employees call out sick, I passed my wife her curds and opened up my wings.

My wings were drowning in buffalo sauce, and barely crispy because of it, but I wasn't going to spend any more time on this. My wife's curds were very over cooked, to the point that the cheese inside was actually tough. I would enjoy them crispy, but tough cheese? Not so much.

Oh, and the price for that tough cheese was $10.00 and the soupy buffalo wings was $6.00! All in all, a really poor value.

Suffice to say, the food was sub-par, and the wait was not worth it, and while the people were friendly, at least today they couldn't get...

Ordered food at 8:55. Didn’t get our food until after 9:15. No one before us or after. We had pulled up, got drinks immediately. But then nothing for another 10 minutes. The drive thru window was open and workers were literally just cleaning. No acknowledgment. No one working on the order. I tried getting a persons attention and he looked at me and looked away and kept working. Had to say “HEY” louder and asked about the order that was blinking on the screen. He said oh yeah sorry about that. And then kept working. Waited longer and no one still seemed to be working on our order. No more communication. We had ordered before the store was closed. If they didn’t want to make the food they should have said they were closed when we pulled up. Even though it was still open. My husband goes inside to ask about our order because we haven’t been communicated with if anyone was actually making it. They start scrambling to make it and then possibly the manager comes out and tells my husband he can’t be inside and he needs to leave. No apology for forgetting about our order. No apology for the crappy service. No apology for anything. He kept telling him to leave.

Ridiculous service and behavior. Own up to your mistakes. It’s not that hard. And trying to throw a customer out who is asking about an order when YOU messed up and completely forgot about is WILD. If that’s the manager, no wonder the service is crap. You’re not running the place well at all. And teach your workers to have better customer service. Ignoring people and not wanting to deal with them even though it’s your job, is...

Horrible Service, Run away, 2nd time being at this location. I went thru the drive thru and it took at least 20 min's to get to the window to pay and the person at the window had asked me if such and such was my order and I said NO and I explained to him what it was and he said we didn't do that and I said to the person who took my order you said you could so then he checks on that and comes back with my total and I pay then he hands me my food and no change. He is either on something, is lacking in motivation or personality by saying oh! then he went back and got me my change and I went on my way. My previous time I had pre ordered for pick up paid online and even followed up by phone on order and pick up time and get there and again wait in line for 20 min's or more and get to the window and they again ask me if such and such was my order and I said NO and tried to explain I preordered and had a reference number and again explained what I had ordered and he said oh my bad here is your order. So I feel like customer service and focusing on providing a quality product in a timely fashion hence Fast Food would be extremely helpful. I won't go back. Ridiculous and get that guy out of the window....