Swig — Restaurant in Santa Clara

Update 4/11/24

My wife loves Swig. I figured I’d try it again.

The Fighter drink is bland. Granted, it’s water based. I just thought the ingredients would add more flavor. Live and learn. I failed to get a receipt for my cc purchase and they didn’t offer one. My bad, I guess. I tried calling them and their number is either a cell phone with no mailbox and won’t answer or they don’t have a working number. That’s their bad. My wife loves it. I won’t go back.

A year ago:

I was glad to see a menu well before the order station outside. I'd never been there so this helped. I didn't want to hold up a line while I looked.

When I started looking at ingredients for the sodas, I noticed that, of the 35 listed (I counted later), 22 have either a tropical ingredient I'm allergic to (3, not their fault), or coconut (19, marketing choice), which I hate, or both. So, that limited my choices.

Cars had pulled up behind me.

I quickly looked at Revivers. Of the 14 listed, 8 had coconut and 5 had a tropical ingredient.

Two cars.

Of the Refreshers, 15 of the 16 listed had one or both of the above.

I saw "This Bliss" which was a diet coke with cranberry and lime. I decided on that. I pulled up and the music blaring from the building was so loud I couldn't hear the young woman taking my order. I had to yell. She yelled, too, but it was pointless. I ordered This Bliss.

When I tasted it, it was essentially diet coke. I used my imagination and got some lime. I never tasted any cranberry. When I got home I let others taste it. Diet coke.

I can save a ton of money and get diet coke at the store and squirt some lime juice (in the fridge) into it. With a little investment, I can buy some cranberry infuser and make my own This Blisses.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but I'll probably never go back. Admittedly, I could order my own drink and name my own ingredients off their menu, but can do...

Worst Swig service ever! Plan on camping out for a few hours before you even have your order taken! I went there the first time and waited in the store for 20 minutes. Employees didn’t even acknowledge ppl waiting to have their orders taken. I went into this Swig location again the very next day thinking it might have been a fluke the first time. The second time I went into the store I waited for about 10-15 min. Again, no acknowledgement that mine or other customers’ orders would soon be taken. So I thought I’d try my luck thru the drive thru, but bc our truck is so big it doesn’t fit well in drive throughs so I just walked into the line. The employee saw me standing there in the drive thru and took the orders of the cars in front of me although she saw me standing there she didn't bother to quickly say “I can’t take your order if you don’t have a car” until she’d already taken orders of the cars in front of me making me wait further. I’m not sure of the reasoning behind Swig’s policy in this regard, but if it was a safety issue she certainly should’ve told me BEFORE she started taking other orders. Otherwise it defeats the purpose of Swig’s safety policies. So I then went back into the store and asked if someone could just take my order, but then they proceeded to say they were doing other things and focused on taking the orders of the drive thru so I just left without placing an order. We were here visiting family and ALL OF US had the same experience with it taking forever to get a drink. It was ridiculous! None of us will be going back to this Swig...

Absolutely ridiculous wait in the drive through. The line at drive up soda shop should be blistering fast. Especially with everyone paying beforehand. 3-5 min per car? What a joke. Improve your process.

Edit: Found out the long wait is from those with refill cups. The car directly in front of us paid with cash and had 4 refill cups. So I imagine of the 8-10 cars that were in front us when we got in line, there were a number of them who also had refill cups that really slow down the line. I understand and support reusing mugs/cups but you need to change something to speed that process along. It does no good to have the outside cashier 15 cars paid ahead, if there are a bunch of those cars with refill mugs. It could be far more efficient to be 3 to 4 cars paid ahead, but that cashier take those refill mugs to be filled before the person...