Capriotti's Sandwich Shop — Restaurant in Santa Clara

I live about a block away from this location (in Santa Clara), I've tried the place twice, and I don't think I'll be going back. From my perspective, there are a few significant problems:

(1) Speed. This is a basic sandwich shop, with nothing out of the ordinary about it, yet making a sandwich somehow takes a significant amount of time even when the place is practically empty.

(2) Attention to Detail. Both of the times that I visited this location my order was messed up. For example, my most recent order was for (a) 3 turkey sandwiches, two with just meat, cheese, and lettuce, and the third was for everything except cheese and onions, and (b) a roast beef sandwich with just cheese, lettuce, pickles, olives, and mayo. However, what I received was a roast beef sandwich with everything on it, one turkey sandwiches with just meat, cheese, and lettuce, and two turkey sandwiches with everything except cheese and onions. On my previous visit I also ordered just a single roast beef sandwich with cheese, lettuce, pickles, olives, and mayo; but instead I also received a roast beef sandwich with everything on it instead. Of course they are willing to correct their mistakes, but unless you manually inspect your sandwiches before leaving their shop, you have no way to know that they messed them up. And then you have to go have them re-made... but, see item #1 above.

(3) Fresh Veggies. This place looks like an upscale sandwich shop, but they are lacking in their fresh veggie options. No cucumbers, no sprouts, and not much of anything else either except for the basic lettuce, tomato, pickles, olives, and onion. I'm not a big veggie-eater myself, but my wife loves them, and after I bought her turkey sandwich this last time I immediately drove over to Harmons to pick up cucumbers and sprouts to add to her sandwich.

So, all in all,...

So I've always loved this place. When I first heard of Capriotti's years ago, I got hooked and kept coming back. The old slaw-be-joe, cole turkey, the Bobbie, the capastrami, they were all packed full for a reasonable price back then. Sadly, I think I've finally reached my stopping point with them. They have great sandwich concepts, but you don't get anywhere near your money's worth if you don't have some sort of coupon to lessen the price.

The sandwiches have gotten smaller in size, they're less packed full of ingredients, and the prices have skyrocketed. $7.29 for a 5" turkey sandwich, and $7.79 for a 5" Chicken Parm, and the Chicken Parm was very under prepared with ingredients while being overcooked and dry. It's just sad that my once favorite sandwich place is going the wrong way with both price and quality.

It's a 1 star experience nowadays because you can easily find better bang for your buck elsewhere, but I gave an extra star for the previous delicious experiences I've had at Cappi's over the years. I can't justify the expense anymore, and will only visit if I get some sort of substantial coupon (like the BOGO I got tonight) to make the overall price more worth it. Not some little $2-$3 off they often throw my way on the app to cover the taxes.

Pictured is the 5" cole turkey right when I opened it. About the size of 2 small ramekins. Take out about half of the ingredients, and that's how big the chicken Parm was. Pretty...

I think that maybe ordinarily I'd want to give a more negative review - but here is the thing, the labor shortage is a huge problem for restaurants and services and so people need to chill out and have maybe 5 minutes of patience. Yesterday we went to grab dinner with my family. The young woman at the register was struggling, she mentioned it was her first time. No big deal. Another woman, obviously the supervisor or owner (?) had to keep stop doing what she was doing to help her out - they were obviously understaffed. HOWEVER, despite it taking a minute to get our order in and our sandwiches served what was important to me was to see how the women treated her new young cashier. She could have easily got irritated with her or demeaning as she had to repeat a couple of instructions, but she didn't.

When service is slow no matter where you go and it is no fault of the business owner of the overworked employees who show up then I guess what matters to me is that I support good people. My experience was just a moment of time, but having worked in the service industry in my early life I was grateful for a person who was kind to not only us but her employee even when you could easily argue she would be justified to not be. So I chose to support good people and will be back.

And most importantly, despite all of that, our sandwiches were good and she comped us some chips because of a misunderstanding...