&pizza — Restaurant in Virginia

I was really looking forward to this location’s grand opening but unfortunately my experience was not great. I received a coupon for a free pizza & soda for their fam & friends grand opening event July 11th. I placed my order using their website around 1:00pm but set the pick up time for 5:25pm since we weren’t hungry yet and wanted to get it for dinner. I received a text around 1:20pm saying they received my order for pick up on July 11th at 5:25pm. However, a few minutes later I received a text saying my order was being prepared and a few minutes later saying it was ready for pickup. I texted back questioning it since it was not suppose to be ready until 5:25pm. They responded apologizing saying they would resend the order and it was likely an accidental “press of the button.” However, in mid conversation I received another text saying the order was being made and again saying it was ready. I ignored this text until closer to the pick up time, around 4:50pm, and reached back out about the order. I was told they were remaking the order so we went ahead and started heading that way. At 5:06pm, I received a text saying the order was ready. We got to the location at 5:15pm and the line was out the door around the corner (not upset about that at all, I’m glad they had such a large response). We walked to the pick up counter and was told they were extremely confused because “you placed this order multiple times today.” I explained to the gentlemen that I only placed the order once but for whatever reason the order was being prepared before my pickup time and the resubmissions were being done by their text service. I showed him the messages where it said my order was placed for pickup at 5:25pm. It turned out that at some point between the order being ready at 5:06pm and us arriving to the location at 5:15pm they had “thrown the order away” because it “could not be eaten” and because they were unsure whether the order was a “real” order since it had been placed multiple times throughout the day. They remade it but it was not ready until about 5:35pm - 20 mins after we had gotten there and 10 mins after the initial order pickup time. The employee standing at the pickup area, whose name I unfortunately did not get, was very nice, made small talk with us while we waited, and gave us an extra free soda for the inconvenience.

Overall, the pizza and sodas were very good. The location looked great inside and the employees all seemed very nice. However, the ordering experience was a large hassle and inconvenience. There appeared to be no communication between the texting center and the physical location and the ordering system seems to not recognize orders placed for later times. If we do decide to order from here again, it will only be when we are ready to eat in order to avoid this issue...

After frequenting the Dulles 28 location many times since they opened a few months ago, you can classify me as a regular. We've had &pizza occasionally before this location opened, so we're familiar with their offerings from in-person ordering, but only made aware of their extended online menu when we started ordering online. We've dined here on a wide assortment of times from lunch on weekdays to dinner on weekends, from single orders to group orders, and I don't have a clue why ratings aren't higher (as of today, it has around 2.5 rating on Google reviews. What's up with that??).

Don't let the rating dissuade you from dining here. Take it from me, the pizzas taste great and are fresh made to order in as fast as humanly possible. Staff is helpful and friendly. Ordering online is super easy and efficient, even when using a promo code. If you open an account with them and attach your number, you'll get updates as your order gets processed, from them assembling it all the way to letting you know when it's ready. It's pretty simple. I feel for the people who've had bad experiences here, maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, but again I've dined here more times than I care to admit and we've had a flawless experience each time. They've even executed custom orders exactly the way we wanted them, and even offered a free cookie when one of our pizzas took longer than expected. What more can you ask for?

And BTW, my go-to order is American Honey. Just something about the combination of crispy pepp, arugula, cheese, red pepper flakes, and hot honey that makes me give it the...

I'm really disappointed that this &pizza location is as bad as it is because I've had great experiences with all the other locations I've visited. I've been to this &pizza location 3x, and unfortunately I've had bad experiences 2/3 of those times. The first time was for the grand opening with the free pizza and drink, which was great even though I had to wait a while in line. The second time was an online order, and they mixed up the ingredients of the 2 pizzas we ordered. That is ok, I totally understand that people mess up sometimes, however, the employees argued with me saying that they were correct when they definitely were not correct! I had to go back and forth with them multiple times before they would remake my pizza correctly. The most recent time we ordered online, they (sort of) had all the correct toppings on the pizzas, but the toppings were so incredibly sparse! The pizza in the photo is supposed to have broccoli and basil on it, and all I can see is one basil leaf and some tiny broccoli dust. Not to mention that there were some large bald sections with no cheese. 😡 Very...