Firehouse Subs Gateway Mall — Restaurant in Springfield

Ordered 3 sandwiches, with very few substitutions, online @ 6:24pm. Website stated a pickup time of 6:40pm. Arrived at 6:40pm to pick up sandwiches to 3 people working, but no sandwiches made. Was told it would be another 10-15 mins. OK, I can deal with that, sometimes you get busy and I understand. A dozen high school kids come in just before 7 and all place orders. At 7:00pm, 20 mins after I was told 10-15 mins, sandwiches are still not ready. Ask for an ETA as I'm getting a bit frustrated at this point, and am told 5-10 more minutes. Multiple delivery drivers arrive during my time there, and are all told 10-15 more minutes, which is far from the kind of wait I have been experiencing. While I continue to wait, 3 of the high school kids receive their sandwiches, which were ordered quite literally 40 mins after I placed my order online. At this point I am furious that I have had to wait nearly an hour from when I ordered online for 3 sandwiches, and 40 mins of that was waiting in store from the time my order was supposed to be ready. By 7:23pm, I finally received 3 sandwiches, 59 minutes after I received my order confirmation. One of the sandwiches was completely soggy by the time I got back home, less than 5 minutes away.

This is wholly unacceptable.

First off, give the employees the option to adjust online pickup order times so that they aren't overwhelmed when they get busy, and if they already have that option, then train the employees to actually use the function.

Second, prioritize appropriately. Regardless of how the order was placed, the time stamp should be the priority. First order up, first order out. It's a sandwich shop, there isn't a tremendous difference in assembly times from sandwich to sandwich being that they are primarily "hot", and the cold sandwiches should take even less time than that.

Third, train your employees to work the assembly line as a team, especially during the busy times. It is very inefficient to have all three of those employees running circles around each other when the whole operation could be streamlined significantly. While I was there I witnessed all three employees working on a single, separate order ticket. It would make considerably more sense to split the work load for each sandwich, which would also keep you on point with complaint 2 and sticking to order times as the priority. Of 3 employees, One person for register, bread, and condiments; one for meats and veggies, and one for steaming, wrapping and packaging.

And lastly, if you are running behind, give appropriate delay times. Don't tell people 10-15 mins when it's going to be 40. If I would have known the wait was going to be that excessive, I could have gotten other things done and come back, instead of waiting in increments of 10-20 mins.

To be clear, a majority of this is not a complaint against the employees. This is mostly due to poor leadership and management. They were clearly completely overwhelmed and poorly trained in how to deal with a workload of that magnitude. Properly trained employees should be able to handle even the busy times without major problems and only a slight increase in wait times, not hour long wait times as they would have been trained how to come together and work as a team when necessary to tackle the heavy...

This is a very disgusting vial restaurant, from the owners, all the way down to how the food is handled, and stored. The owner, an old woman with glasses, her name is Karen. She is very rude to customers, she talks down to them and about them as soon as they leave. She treats her employees like trash, and she employs her family from Medford who come in and pocket money from the cash register. The wait times are awe full because every person working will always be brand new. She can’t keep employees because of how horrible she is. She gives them bare minimum training and then throws them on the line to make the food. The next time you think “I can go for fire house subs right now” just remember you aren’t supporting your local firemen, you’re supporting a disgusting family that treats customers and staff horribly. I can only hope that this business gets bought by a new owner because as long as it’s ran by the current one, it will...

I was going to give more stars but after reading a previous review from just two weeks ago regarding the same exact thing, and nothing has been done, I have to give just one star. Today, my daughter and I went into the restaurant with our masks on - which every single customer had on as well - and not ONE single employee out of FOUR had a mask on?! I work in the spa industry and our guidelines are SO STRICT for reopening to public, yet people preparing FOOD are just leaning over the food breathing all over it with no regard? I don't understand. I am very disappointed to see this disregard for the current laws in place, and confused about how ownership of this Firehouse Subs is allowing ALL of their employees to not wear masks. There wasn't a mask in sight.. not dangling around someone's neck or half on.. just none. Unfortunately my daughter was very hungry and I had to order food for her, reluctantly. I didn't...