Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen — Restaurant in Valparaiso

I have been here 3 times in the past several months, each time with my girlfriend (so I have a witness!) Here are my 3 bad experiences:

1st time: Many months ago we were looking for a late night meal, and saw Popeyes was open. We showed up 30 minutes before close, and a lady refused to serve us "We are trying to close..." and was very rude. Although it was super unfair, we didn't want to argue and having both worked in food service before, we cut the crew some slack and went to White Castle and had a great meal. Thank you White Castle.

2nd time: Last week we went through the drive through again. I think this was the same employee taking our order actually. Although seemingly very kind at first, our order (5 piece tender combo meal) was shortened by two tenders and an extra biscuit. Although realistically, it was like 2.5 tenders as per the picture below. I submitted a report through the Popeyes website and hopefully will get refunded or at least a coupon.

3rd time: Today via DoorDash I ordered 18 bone-in wings, a large Mac and Cheese, and two biscuits. Taking advantage of some mobile order offers effectively cutting cost by almost twenty dollars less by ordering this many. On arrival, we immediately noticed we were missing 6 wings, and the remaining 12 wings were boneless... The Mac and Cheese was lukewarm at best and stale. The biscuits were hard and my girlfriend can attest, they felt hard as a rock. Sauces were missing was blackened ranch which was a given option on the DoorDash app. This experience was especially bad, but thankfully DoorDash does quickly refund.

At this point, I will no longer go to this Popeye's, and likely will avoid the others. Wingstop, ItsJustWings, BWWs, and Cane's have all been drastically better and with better service. (Cane's is 100% worth the drive to Michigan City can NOT recommend it enough).

There is clearly either a staff training issue, or you have staff deliberately taking food from orders. Not only that but where is the management in all of this to keep things under control? Clearly there is none. Don't waste your time...

Where do I begin. My lovely partner Orion had ordered THREE TIMES here. THREE TIMES. As you can see in his review I'm the one who was a witness to ALL of this and shall 100% attest to his account of all three times we ordered here. Not only is the lady who served us a few months ago and recently last week for the second time in the drive through RUDE, but she needs to get fired due to her incompetency. I personally don't know how this place gets five stars when the food is BARELY salvageable at best. Tenders are bland and dry, wings (well boneless since they don't know how to make bone-in) were EXTREMELY dry. Legitimately the dryest chicken I ate ever. The sauce was COLD and gelatonus for the Garlic Parmasran boneless wings we got today. Our sad looking six boneless wings were barely even wings more like nuggets, biscuits were dry and rock-hard, and Mac and Cheese honestly tasted stale and cheese was burnt (don't get me started on how lukewarm it was I might as well make Kraft Mac and Cheese at that point)

Staff clearly either does not know, does not care, or both on how to do the job they decided to sign up for. The real problem, I think, is most certainly management considering other reviews that faced similar issues have faced.

Shout out literally ANY (especially honorable mentions of Wingstop, Raising Cane's, Its Just Wings, Papa John's wings (pizza too), and ESPECIALLY White Castle) other fast food place that knows how to make good chicken. Literally go to McDonalds at this point it's not that far and get a McCrispy it's 10x better.

Anyone who reads this you've been warned. If they get better good for them but we will NEVER go here...

Decent Popeyes in terms of food. I usually only get the chicken sandwich and sometimes it’s lackluster. Only reason why I’m rating it 2 stars instead of 1.

The reason for it being 1 star is that I ordered ON THE POPEYES APP around 915pm one night because not only did their app say they were open, everywhere online did as well. However, they were closed at 9pm and were all cleaning up when I pulled into the drive thru.

The issue comes with how this situation was dealt with. I pulled up to the window and people looked right at me and dismissively walked away. 3 employees did this. So I started to honk so they would address me.

Eventually someone walked up and told me it was closed so I said “well I ordered on your app and y’all took my money...”

The woman beckons who I assume to be the manager. Both were immediately nasty and aggressive towards me. They said it was MY FAULT for ordering on THEIR APP like I somehow (even though everything said they were open) I should know. I was aghast. They were so rude even when I asked what I should do to get my money back since they were not going to make my 2 chicken sandwiches (which I had already paid for). They said that wasn’t their responsibility and told me to leave as they shut the window. I understand that it’s a corporation and that somethings are dealt with on the backend and not on site but how about being helpful instead of blaming me for trying to pay them for food?

Extremely unprofessional and honestly quite aggressive. Not sure what’s going on with management but I would be ashamed to represent an establishment run that way.

Probably my 3rd worst experience at...