Chick-fil-A — Restaurant in Town of North Greenbush

I really hate to be THAT person, but it needs to be said. I used to live down south where Chick-fil-A is extremely popular, it's my favorite fast food restaurant. I even drive to Holyoke, MA many times a year to get this although it doesn't taste exactly like down south, but still worth the drive. Reasons why I love Chick-fil-A is the welcoming atmosphere and very known greeting of "It's a wonderful day at Chick-fil-A ", however I have been greeted with hello, how are you? Is it better than Micky D's dry greeting? Yes, but the standard that I know this restaurant to be has unfortunately missed the mark. Now for the locals, who may not know any better and may think its the "bees knees", but sadly, I'm going to have to disagree. It's severly under-seasoned and underwhelming. I have never not finished my sandwich, spicy chicken deluxe BTW and I just wasn't able to, it wasn't good. I came back for breakfast, spicy chicken biscuit, mediocre. It's giving "Up North" and not in a good way. The workers told me they had 1 day of training and it shows. Down south they are trained for weeks and it shows. I know we don't have the southern hospitality, but even in Lancaster, PA the food was delicious and the greeting and engagement was above and beyond. Please bring some folks in from even the city, NJ, or even Mass for some training...oh and the lemonade, terrible. There wasn't enough sugar. Yes, sugar. I want ya'll to win and I will come back again, maybe you guys need room to grow, but I had to leave an honest review despite the locals who think it's 5 star worthy, it's not, but I guess for Albany, it is🙄

Update: 12/4/23- it's only fair to give an update. It NOW tastes like the CFA that I'm familiar...

Blatant violations of NYS food safety regulations (Section 14-1.80 - Food preparation and service) when the drive-thru attendant took my $$ payment with her bare hands and then turned around and passed me an ice cream cone from yet another bare-handed employee. So the person making the cone had no gloves on and the person that passed me the cone at the drive-thru window had no gloves on!! Not even a napkin wrapped around the base of the cone to protect it from multiple people handling it. I was disgusted. If this is how they serve customers, can you imagine what they're doing in the kitchen where you can't see?

Using the mobile app to place an order does not make the order faster. If anything, it complicates going through the drive-thru. They will not start to make your order until you check in and then often have to wait for orders that were placed after you. Despite there not being many cars in the drive-thru lane the wait was even longer than usual.

Also, it's one of the coldest days we've had this year and the heaters were off. I've waited in the drive-thru on cool fall days and the heaters were rip-roaring hot. These are small issues in comparison to the potential food poisoning they...

My friends and I went on a Tuesday night after a basketball game in Troy. While the drive-thru was a bit busy we decided to go inside; as it didn't appear to be as bad. While the order line moved fairly well! Getting our food was horrible. We quickly realized the people who were already waiting began furiously complaining they'd been waiting as long as 25 minutes - some for their shakes others for food. I only ordered a Cobb salad 🥗 with grilled chicken. When it became my turn to receive my salad 🥗 numerous people who ordered after me were receiving there food. After about 15/20 minutes I stated to the young lady who was bringing out the orders "I only ordered a Cobb salad, do you know how much longer it's going to take"! She said she'd check on it. In the meantime other orders continued to come out and although my friends had ordered much more than I did all they'd received was a milk shake which had been drunk before we finally received our orders. 😟 I was very disappointed at this location. I have gone to many Chic-fil-A's this is the first time I've experienced poor performance. Hoping it's due to newly being opened and the crew will get it together...