Taco Time NW — Restaurant in Seattle

I've been frequenting Taco Time's around the northwest for 40 years. My experience at this location was appalling.

I understand that this location has limited parking and drive-through space, so I've taken that into account. But when I was pulling in, there was a car backing out of the drive-through. I waited and let them back out. Then another car started to back out, so I let them out as well. I asked what the issue was, and they both stated that it was taking "forever".

I then decided to park and walk in. There were 5 or 6 patrons waiting around for their orders, but only 1 customer in front of me ordering, so I didn't think it would take much time.

I ordered without issue. Beef soft taco, no ranch.

Meanwhile, the employees looked like they were having a great time, laughing, yucking it up, and paying attention to each other. The problem is they weren't paying attention to their customers, or surroundings. I wish I had started to video everything.

I mentioned to an employee that they were out of salsa at the salsa bar....multiple times it looked like he would take care of it, then didn't. He got sidetracked multiple times, and not with customers. Multiple times he went into the managers office with another girl, not sure what went on in there.

There was only one person that was making food for all the customers, both walk-in and drive-through.

While I was waiting, multiple customers just walked out. Not sure if they had already paid or not.

After 15+ minutes of waiting, I hear the 1 guy that does all the preparation say, "so I guess I'll have to make that soft taco, no ranch?". I then see them emptying out the contents of a to-go order bag, and they comment, "They already left"... So they are now re-purposing some already made food for other orders.

At that point I see him shifting a few half-made soft tacos and burritos around on the bar, and then he proceeds to scrape half of something out of one, and into another. After wrapping up what looked to be the contents of my order, they call my number. I respond with, "so you scrape half of the contents out of my taco, and into another?" The prep worker responds with, "It wasn't beef, it was beans". So they take something that had already been made, scrape out the beans, and hand it to me as a beef soft taco.

At that point I had seen enough. I responded with, "I don't want any food from this place, you guys are a $h!tshow". Even though I had already paid, I couldn't fathom getting any food from here, be it the wait, the shoddy customer service, and the absolute disgusting nature of how they dealt with their food. What If I was allergic to beans, and they left some of the residual on the inside of my taco?

This place doesn't represent any Taco Time experience that I've had in my 40+ years of patronizing their establishments.

At the time there was also an older couple that apparently knew the owner/manager, and had been coming here for years, and were very adamant that they were going to tell them of the poor service.

EDIT 6/25/2019

I have reached out to guestrelations@tacotimenw.com multiple time, as requested by other facilitators at TTNW, but haven't received any response to date.

My 1 star...

I usually don't go to this place directly (hence the lack of rating on the "atmop[here") as I lack my own transportation and they are a bit far to to schedule a via paratransit & back, so I order via DoorDash, as they are the only delivery service that has this place without charging an arm & a leg for delivery like UberEats does, though that location is in Burien so that's why they charge so much, which is understandable with today's cost of fuel and Taco Time probably doesn't have any control over the cost of delivery. The food here is always good, but one thing I do not unserstand is the Doordash app does not let you order a soft taco combo meal with chicken, but if you order the soft taco by itself, you can get it with chicken. What the hell, Taco Time? If an item on the menu is availble with chicken with the item only, then it should be able to be ordered with the combo meal.

If you order via DoorDash from this place & you want a soft taco combo with chicken order the natural soft taco, which comes with a whole wheat tortilla, but you can get it with a flour tortilla if you like.

That's another thing I do not understand, they already offer a soft taco that you can get with a whole wheat tortilla, so what the heck is the difference? Googe AI tells me it's all about marketing and customer preferences. Okay, whatever. I think it's pointless, but what do I know. I'm not business-savvy like the bigwigs at Taco Time. Still, they are a great place to order from and the food is both nutritious (depending on what you get) and...

This is a great place especially when considering it is of the fast food variety. What I state here is true at every Taco Time restaurant I've been to in the past three years. The food is good and fresh and comparatively healthy when held up to other fast food options. The staff is always courteous and friendly and willing to go out of their way to be of service. This implies to me that they are treated with respect and that their working conditions and compensation are probably considerably better than at most fast food chains. And in terms of their corporate social and ecological responsibility, they have a special promotional fund-raising program for non-profit organizations, and they took it upon themselves to establish a comprehensive composting program for their restaurants which includes almost everything they use to serve and package their food for their customers....