Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Vandalia

On 4/9/2025, we placed an online order for pickup. I arrived 25 minutes after placing the order. It wasn't ready, which wasn't a big deal. The restaurant was busy and I understand. I waited 10 minutes to get my bag of food. Upon getting back to my car, I decided to check the order. I found that the soup we ordered wasn't in the bag. I looked at the receipt to find that somebody had crossed off the soup and wrote "out" next to it. I went back, waited in line a few minutes to talk to someone. I pointed out the notation on the receipt and asked how to go about getting a refund for the soup. The clerk said she didn't know and that "we usually just do a substitution". I told her I didn't want a substitution, so she went to the back to ask someone else about the refund. A few minutes later, she returned. But instead of addressing my issue, she walked past me and proceeded to deliver a few more carry out orders to waiting guests and then took a curbside order outside. As she came back in, I stopped her to ask if there was any resolution to my missing soup. She deferred to another clerk, who again offered me a substitution. I said I'll just take a side salad please. That clerk was in the middle of taking an order from another guest and said she'd get it in a minute. Ultimately, she went to get my salad... which took about 10 minutes. Now mind you - all the rest of my food was sitting in the car getting cold. Eventually, she returned with my salad. At that point, it had been 25 minutes since I received the initial order. I asked to speak to a manager, to which I was told he's unavailable. I took my salad and left with the rest of my (now cold) food. From the minute we placed the online order to the time I left, it was exactly one hour. Exceptionally frustrating, after a long day at work when you're just trying to have a quick and easy solution to dinner. 15 minute drive home, warmed it up in the microwave, and it was pretty good. But as someone who gets carryout at least twice a week, it will be a LONG time before I choose Cracker Barrel again. First and foremost, I should have been called when someone discovered they were out of the soup I ordered. And short of that, somebody should have TOLD me, upon pickup, that I didn't receive the soup. And it's absolutely ridiculous that, after I discovered that on my own (thankfully before I got home), it took 25 minutes to reach a resolution (the salad substitution that I didn't really want). And then the manager is "unavailable"?? So this busy store is just running in auto-pilot during the dinner rush, with nobody to help the staff when there's a problem? No excuse whatsoever for this nonsense. With the volume of carryout / door dash pickups I saw happening, this store truly needs a dedicated carryout team and a manager that's ensuring things go smoothly. I gave two stars instead of one only because the food...

Our waitress was the only reason the service received the 2-stars that it did. She was very friendly. I had a group of 16 coming in for breakfast this morning. We tried to call ahead and didn’t receive an answer. We tried a reservation online and it wouldn’t accept more than a party of 6. We sent a member of our party in to put our name in at the hostess stand and was told they couldn’t seat us in the section for larger parties because a larger group had called ahead, although this party wasn’t arriving until we were standing there waiting. After waiting we were told they could seat a group of 9 together and a group of 7 as closely as possible but not at the same table. We were then hurried inside with a threat that if we didn’t come accept the tables then we’d be placed back on the wait list. We walked inside (without being shown to the table) and had to wait in the open area. Our party of 9 was then shown to a table that only sat 8. The manager came up to the table without saying hello and rudely asked “what’s wrong?” I explained the situation and she interrupted to tell me that she couldn’t do anything about it and she told the member of my party earlier that our large group would be in two separate dining rooms. I waited for her to finish before saying something else and she interrupted me a second time to aggressively push her tablet near my face to show me how crowded her sections were (I didn’t ask to see nor did I question it or her defensive nature). I then took a step back and told her it was fine but the issue still remained that she was having us sit 9 people at a table with 8 chairs. She stood straight and replied “oh, is that it?” And pulled a chair from the table next to us. To add to this, she was rude to another member of our party. The worst of the entire issue was that she was overheard by a member of our party complaining to another individual that I was being rude and irate because I was upset and I was demanding a table to seat us because I said she had promised we would sit together (none of which was said by anyone in our party). Again, the waitress who was kind, apologetic, and prompt was the only reason they received as many stars as they did. I also witnessed a table have to get up and go get a waitstaff member because no one had come to their table to take their order and another group have to be moved because they were sat at a table in the corner for five adults and didn’t have room for their drinks or food. Terrible service and we should have gone to Bob Evans. I will not be returning to...

I am a rewards member who frequently travels. I have eaten at Cracker Barrels throughout many states. This particular Cracker Barrel was chosen because my nephew, home on leave from the Air Force, used to work there so a family gathering was scheduled. The wait app on the phone was inoperative. No reservation could be done on the phone so we took our chances on getting a table on a Saturday evening. Much to our surprise the back room was virtually empty upon our arrival. A table for twelve was not going to be a problem. This is where the issues started. We could not be seated in the dining room until the entire party was there. It was too cold to sit outside and no indoor seating available EXCEPT in the dining room. Had several older people and one disabled person in the party. As you can imagine we were not off to a good start. When we were finally able to be seated, we had a very long wait for service. We wanted to start with drinks first of which only beer available was Michelob Ultra. Drinks and food order had to be combined. You could have made more money from this party if we had been seated earlier and allowed some drinks before diner. Now the food.... Supposedly the fried chicken is excellent, we were all talking about it as we scanned the menu that has changed significantly. Well, after we started ordering fried chicken, we were told that the fryer was down and fried chicken was not available. Strange that one person in the party ordered chicken tenders, burned crispy by the way another person ordered country fried turkey, also burned and crispy. The person to my right had grilled chicken with so much burned spices it was disgusting. The person to my left had chicken and dumplings with mashed potatoes served with no gravy. When a side of gravy arrived , it was stone cold like it just came out of the refrigerator. The whole meal was just put in a box to take home. Appetite was gone after the long wait and cold food. I had the pot roast. Hot but meat that was hard and dry. Very few carrots that were also hard. Side of collards that were watery, unseasoned and virtually tasteless. Two baskets of biscuits and cornbread and salad was okay. All in all the food was horrible. Probably the worst that I have ever had at any Cracker Barrel location. Management needs some business 101 training and cook staff needs to learn how to cook. Definitely will not recommend this...