Hat Creek Burger Company — Restaurant in San Marcos

An unexpected visit this most certainly was. 7:45 pm on a Monday getting close to closing time. Brought my two kids in to grab some burgers and get some energy out. Got in the line, I was indecisive as usual and took a minute to order. Gentleman taking my order was sweet and patient. Helped navigate me through the menu and suggested things that he particularly enjoyed. Ordered some things that I normally wouldn’t have based off his suggestion. Got our cups…. Filled up and headed to the playground. Restaurant clean and employees busy. Super windy with some trash flying around, but an employee there to pick it up. Didn’t call my name… brought me my food without asking. The presentation on the tray was worth a marketing photo. Burgers meticulously wrapped. Fries, tots and pickles lined out perfectly on the tray. Burger wraps looked like artwork. Logos dead center and fry packages lined up like soldiers ready at attention. Milkshake with gummy worms on it neatly placed milkshake cold and right consistency. Ice machine stocked. Hot food hot, cold food cold. Employee pre-bussed our table down when time to leave. Employee noticed light not on for playground. Turned on realizing this immediately. In the restaurant this time of night is referred to as the witching hour. Nobody is supposed to care. Your about to close. Jacob the manager on duty had the staff working diligently. I let him know what a great job he was doing and reminded him that if you do something you do it to the best of your ability. He obviously agreed. You could tell he took pride. His standards clearly meant more to him than any restaurants. We all know that people truly make the difference. There is a culture that can take some time to cultivate. This particular location had the culture on lockdown. Thanks to Jacob, Nathan, Noel, Michelle and Sabina for a great visit. Whatever you all end up doing in life…. Do it like you did this Monday night. No one can stop you. Dropped a 100 dollar tip and hit the road. I recommend this Hat Creek location without reservation....

[Edited 8/14/23] Hat Creek was kind enough to reach out and discuss the feedback directly in response to our experience below. 2 extra stars added for the exceptional follow up.

We stopped at Hat Creek on Sunday, July 23rd just as a thunderstorm was rolling into San Marcos. Upon ordering, we were told that our food would take 20-25 minutes to prepare. Unusual, but semi-acceptable, considering we were wanting to wait out the storm.

We did not receive our food until 45 minutes later. Apart from the wait, what was most frustrating was watching the dozens of cars come through the drive through, and getting their food in 5-10 minutes.

I've often seen a drive through prioritized over indoor guests, but never to this degree. The patrons inside were all visibly frustrated. No apologies or explanations were given. I'm fairly certain we could have gotten into our car 20 minutes in, gone through the drive through, and gotten our food to bring inside and eat, before our first order was delivered.

I know things happen, but the true miss was the evident lack of training around how to deal with customers when things don't go right. "Have a gift card, have a milkshake, thanks for your patience, come back again, we'll do better, we're sorry." The employees, who appeared to feel bad about the wait, were clearly not empowered to do anything about it.

Things go wrong sometimes, How you equip your team to manage customer expectations and communicate through the difficulty greatly influences whether you will end up keeping a customer or losing one.

As for us, and those reading, if you do visit this location, your safest bet for a decent turnaround on getting your food is likely the...

My wife and I picked up an order that we had placed online. Everything was correct except when I asked for the frozen lemonade the cashier corrected me and said I did give you the lemonade already and that was the only drink you had. We had ordered two drinks total. So I parked and went in with reciept to retrieve the regular lemonade my wife picked with her combo. I was initially welcomed, asked how I could be helped and so I explained we just needed the drink and all was good. The manager im guessing from his different colored hat compared to the other workers apologized and grabbed my drink and gave me a 5 dollar gift card to apologize. I thought no harm no foul all is good. Then the cashier who gave us our order came over and asked what happened so I said she didn't give us our regular lemonade in which she said no I asked you if that was the only drink you had. I paused and said "no, you told us this was the only drink we had and then when I questioned you about it you said we had to go because they have a timer for each car and we were in the way". I then said you don't have to be so rude about it and the manager came back up to talk too me after she laughed and walked away. I then decided to leave and as I was he asked me what's wrong and I said you should probably talk to your employee about her rudeness over a drink. He then apologized and I went to walk out when another cook came up trying to act tough and stared at me. I laughed and ask him what did he want. He then tried to say that my interpretation of what she said is my own and I...