Marco's Pizza — Restaurant in Shakopee

Um yikes. Anyone who follows me knows I always hesitate to write bad reviews cause places can have off days... but 2 stars for this place is generous. We were very very excited to try Marcos finally, and even drove for 17 minutes to get here. Placing order online was super easy and the rewards program seems average. Store itself is a very old strip mall that seems like you walked back to the 70s which if the food was good would have made it retro and trendy... as it was it was dingy and dark.

Ordered 2 large pizza - first timers so pepperoni and cheese - pretty standard. I'm 100% a sauce guy with pizzas so was really looking forward to trying something different. It was.. meh. Mid. Average. Nothin special at all. Sauce was almost non existent, and what was there was basically tomato sauce and oregano. The pies were very very small. They looked like mediums (see pics) from any other place on the planet. Cheese was scarce on each pizza, but I will say the pepperoni saturation was good. Crust proportionately was way off, with huge chunks of crust left over after eating the slices. Since the crust has 0 flavor at all - this is a problem. We did do garlic sauce cups which made it more palatable but barely. My dog liked the crusts... so I guess there's that.

We also ordered the cinnamon bites. This one we were torn on as a family. On the one hand it tasted OK, and was a sizeable side/dessert. Alternatively, they give you a frosting packet and you frost it yourself... and it is soooooooo greasy. Like left a huge wet spot on top of the other pizza boxes greasy. I love butter, but this was insane. Flavor was there but the rest... like what the heck?

Staff was nice and efficient at... handing my pizza across the counter... so good service I guess. Everything else? Well I drove past... idk.... 8? other pizza shops to get here and it was just meh. Not unpalatable - just meh.

The best description I can give for someone who hasn't had it... its like old dominos, before they rebranded to the robust tomato sauce and fresh dough or whatever... way too many options in this space to eat Marcos again. So...

If you’re a hijab wearing Muslim woman, I would advise you to go somewhere else! I completely felt unsafe and unwelcome!

So apparently, it’s acceptable for a customer to walk in and be completely ignored by employees. No greeting, no acknowledgment, nothing. I was blatantly ignored by two staff members today. As soon as I walked in, the man with the beard immediately walked away without saying a word. Meanwhile, my order was sitting on the rack, ready for pickup.

There was a woman in the back running orders, and he joined her, clearly avoiding any interaction with me. I wasn’t acknowledged at all, even after saying “hello” a few times. Either I’m imagining things, or they deliberately chose not to serve a Muslim woman wearing a hijab.

I waited for around 10–15 minutes until a delivery driver came in. I immediately told her that I was being ignored and why this was acceptable. I clearly felt that something racist was going on here; loud enough for the two in the back to hear. I asked for the manager, and she pointed to the same man who had been ignoring me. She stared at me blankly as if it was a normal thing to ignore customers. I immediately felt unsafe as now the delivery driver didn’t care about how customers were being treated as well. I paid for my order and walked out.

I’ve always ordered from Marco’s and never had an issue before, which is why I am shocked. But if you’re visibly Muslim, I would not recommend walking in there at all. I felt unsafe and completely unwelcome in that establishment. I’ve never written a review in my life, but I guess today is the day. If they were to even just say to me “ma’am wait a moment” or “we’ll be with you shortly” I wouldn’t even be writing this. It’s the fact that they completely ignored my presence. Muslim women beware, I urge you to go somewhere else that’s...

I will say, it has been a while since we ordered from this location, so I was absolutely gobsmacked when our experience was so poor.

We ordered the 2 medium 1-topping pizzas, cheezybread, and cinnamonbread combo. The cinnamonbread barely had any toppings, but was less of a concern to us since it wasn’t really what we ordered it for anyway. What was the most insane to me was the pizza—notably very few toppings and extremely bubbly crust. Some slices barely even had cheese and were just bread.

I took the pizzas back to the restaurant, where there were 4 employees smoking outside the front entrance. The employee at the counter seemed confused as to what I wanted, but no argument to remake the pizzas. I asked if I should take the old pizzas and was met with the information that if I didn’t take them they would just put them back on the rack for the next person who orders the same thing (…ew). As I waited for them to remake the pizzas, the staff were swearing constantly inside the restaurant which seemed really unnecessary considering they all knew I was there and I would only be there for 10 minutes.

The new pizzas had appropriate toppings, but the crust was still exceptionally bubbly, and floppy and soaked in grease—enough grease to soak through the box.

We used to love this Marco’s and I am sad to say we will not be...