Bojangles — Restaurant in Tallahassee

The reason I'm rating it two stars for now is because this place just recently opened. I wouldn't call it stellar or bad either, but my first experience there wasn't great. (There's a quick summary at the bottom labled TL; DR at the bottom (Too Long; Didn't Read) for those of you who don't want to read this entire thing. It is VERY LONG, so read at your own risk.)

My mother is a fan of Bojangles, so at around 11:00 we entered the restaurant, and came across a lot of people waiting in the line. Granted, the lunch rush had only begun, but there seemed to be problems with the employees behind the counter.

First off, the production of lunch orders was slow. The line was already backed up to the door by the time we got there, and there was only one cashier at the two registers at the front. Two of her co-workers were beside her, filling up the orders. Their job was simple: look at the ticket, make a box, fill it with all the things listed on the ticket, and send it out to the customers.

Now I understand that when there's a huge number of customers waiting in line, naturally, the employees get stressed because of the number of orders they had to take care of in such little time. But the employees here, however, didn't seem prepared for it. One of the employees, for example, made a box, but sometimes instead of filling it, she would spend several minutes standing there and staring at it. The co-worker beside her wasn't any better; he spent a lot of time rechecking the items inside the boxes even though they'd been already filled with the required items. Even when the order was ready to send out, for some reason, he couldn't start packaging the orders in bags and sending them out. Kinda like he wasn't sure he should do it.

To make things worse, they often jumbled up the tickets, and couldn't keep track the order the tickets came. Heck, they couldn't even keep track of everything they put in the boxes, even after a few seconds, surprisingly. They spent a lot of time opening boxes to see if the right pieces of chicken were being put inside, and they kept opening the side containers to see if they put in the right side dish. As a result, the line really piled up, there was a cluster of angry customers waiting at the pick-up section of the counter, and the cashier actually had to go away from her cashier duties to help out her co-workers and get things moving. Eventually, the managers had to step in and take over, and the two co-workers ended up just standing there and practically doing nothing at all.

The only reason I can recall all these events is because we were both standing in front of them watching for about 45 minutes. We finally got our order by then, but some of the other customers probably had it rougher than we did; some poor old geezer in an orange cap had already ordered by the time we arrived, and two men behind us were waiting a much longer time than us since the cashier was forced to abandon her duties at the time. Since the orders were mixed, people got angry and noted how some customers order after they did, but got their orders first.

Lastly, when we were about to leave after the restaurant, we decided to get utensils for our food. However, when we got to the counter with the utensils, there were only five empty tubs, and three others that were full of nothing but knives. So we walked back to the front counter and told the employees that they ran out of utensils and the only thing they had left were knives. They seemed to be completely unaware of this, and we ended up waiting another five minutes for the utensils to be restocked. The box-staring lady even questioned why they were fresh out of utensils, and stood there thinking(?) about it for a few seconds.

TL; DR: This is just the first week, but Bojangles needs to better prepare their workers and teach them how to do things efficiently. Their production is kinda slow, and the workers seem, frankly, uneducated to handle this type of stuff. My mother and I waited for over forty-five minutes to get our orders. It's...

As I'm writing this, Google says thst Bojangles is still open, both locations in the Tallahassee area. We were visiting from 2 hours away and we specifically didn't eat with the family we were visiting because we had decided before we even left our house that we were going to have Bojangles when we left because there isn't one any near our toen;in fact this IS the closest to our home at 2 hours away. We had gone to the drive thru at the other location and were completely ignored, so decided to try this location because it is only 4 miles away. When we pulled up to the drive thru it was 940. It says on google and at the location they close at 10. Well we weren't ignored at this location, at least. As soon as we pulled up someone came over the speaker and said they were out of something. We missed what she said they were out of, and I asked her, "I'm sorry, what arr you out of?" And very rudely she responded, "FOOD!!!" Ok, turn off the sign if for some reason you have run out of food. Which I know they're not out of food. Not all food. If a location states they're open until a certain time, they should serve food until that time. The burger King next door had 5 cars in the drive thru. So it's not as if the area was so slow they couldn't have had customers because there was a car that pulled up as we were pulling out. As expensive as food is these days, by staying open but refusing to serve customers, they are losing out potentially on hundreds of dollars. Dollars they're not making to still paying employees to be there to cook and serve customers until closing time. I realize it was 20 minutes until closing and I've worked in restaurants and I know what it's like when it's slow and if there's no one left in the restaurant and someone wants to dine there and you don't want to have to stay open for another hour to cook and serve and clean up after one customer. But we are talking about a fast food restaurant and a drive thru. You can easily serve customers until closing time at 10 and it's not a huge deal, it's not keeping several employees around paying them to feed a table 2 dinners. If they do this every night, that's a considerable loss that the company is taking, and at the very LEAST if you aren't going to serve drive thru guests past a certain time, you should have the time you're going to stop serving guests correctly listed on google so people don't waste their time driving to your location. And the sign lights and the drive thru menu lights should be off. I'm sure they weren't because the employees would get in trouble if they did that. So instead they leave the lights on and the time the same and just say they're out of food when they don't want to serve anyone else. I'm going to call at opening in the morning and see if they're out of food. If you're still reading this review, it means that they weren't out of food, they were just lying. But if they don't have biscuits at opening tomorrow I will come take this...

Three stars in class (chicken & biscuits, breakfast all day, open on Sunday's).

Couldn't swing the 5AM opening this morning (double-booked with a prior sleeping engagement) but did manage to venture over at 7:10AM when there appeared to be a momentary lull in the morning's hubbub.

Today's to-go order: one cajun filet biscuit, four plain ole' biscuits, an unsweetened iced tea and a coffee.

Wife (iced tea snob/connoisseur) decreed the tea to be good. The coffee was full bodied and flavorful. the kids all had zero problem enjoying their biscuits and jelly, and I sat down to give the cajun filet biscuit the once-over at the breakfast room table.

At first glance, the filet/biscuit takes on the appearance of an Iowan Pork Loin Sandwich. What I mean is that the meat extends far beyond the perimeter of the vehicle (in this case, the biscuit). The filet itself is moist and hot, and the batter is just right.

This is a chicken biscuit to be taken seriously.

Bojangles is "the good stuff" - and now, with an uncannily convenient access to/from the neighboring Krispy Kreme - folks will need to exercise restraint in order to stay within their current clothes sizes. These two will very likely be the "Martin & Lewis" of Park Avenue's LSR scene!

A word about getting in and out of Bojangles. It couldn't be easier. North/South/East/West entries. You can come from Krispy Kreme to the West, Sunshine State Bank to the East, Hays Street to the North, Park Avenue to the South.

Finally, big KUDOS to the visionaries at Bojangles! Corporate. "Breakfast-all-day" is a moneymaker (take note - NASDAQ: BOJA) and the reputation of the biscuits far precedes themselves. I just took a look at the company's 2014 S-1 and in 2014, nearly 40% of the company-wide restaurant revenues come in before 11AM.

We are some...