Cracker Barrel Old Country Store — Restaurant in Virginia

Short Summary: A 2-3 star experience. Okay service, with cold food, missing drink, and long wait time. Great atmosphere inside though. Overall sad and disappointing experience at Cracker Barrel.

3 Star experience for me. I order the “Build Your Own Homestyle Breakfast”, since I was craving some breakfast. You know how after your app order and it would ask if you want some extra, like togo frozen meal, extra sides, or just a drink, well I had order an Iced French Toast Latte. So I got there around 10 minute early to wait for the allotted time. Clicking the I am here and my parking number when it was time, i waited for 20 minute into I saw someone else order curbside. They got out and walked in to grab their food in like 5 minutes. Seeing as this is my first time ordering here, made me wonder it’s normally this slow for curbside, so it would be better to just go in and do pickup. I ended up going inside to pick up my order after waiting for a while. Walking to my car I noticed they didn’t give me my drink, so I walked back in to let the two counter lady know. She gave me a strange look, and told me it wasn’t on my receipt. She then proceeded to explain that they double check the receipt when assembling the order, and how the highlighted mark meant it was double checked. I ended up having to whip out my phone with the app order and it shows it. She goes and say “that’s strange” and got someone to bring me my drink. Waited another 5-7 minute to get my drink and drove home. So I haven’t worked at Cracker Barrel before, but the receipt shows “ICDFRCRMLTOLTE” or something like that. Now I am no genius but pretty sure that means Iced French Toast Latte. So I am home, about to dine on some good food, and it was disappointing. My bacon, ham, and sausage are cold, so was the eggs and gravy. On the bright side, at least the food was fully cooked, and the bacon was crispy, would’ve been nice if they were at least warm. The biscuit and gravy was good, despite it being pretty cold. The fried apple was “ok” honestly, tasted more skin than actual apple. The Southern Apple Cobbler was pretty tasty, kinda taste like Apple Pie, but with extra breading. The Iced French Toast Latte was ok, just tasted like normal coffee with syrup. That’s on me, I was expecting more, only got disappointment. Well that’s it, I would’ve taken picture,...

Worst food, worst service. It was awful. We asked to sit by the fireplace at one of several open tables…we were seated in the back, not even a fireplace view. We asked for sweet tea, cornbread and jelly and she took our appetizer and food order all at the same time. She came back with no drinks - (tea was being made),biscuits and no jelly., (sorry - out of cornbread). Got our drinks a few minutes later (and jelly we asked for twice), unsweet tea all around. We waited for an hour for our appetizer, our server told us twice it would be out in just a minute and then proceeded to blame the kitchen for not fixing it. She said she’d give us a free dessert to make up for it.

A drink got knocked over before the food was delivered and the server stood by while we cleaned it up…she was kind enough to go get us more napkins, gee thanks. You know what else would have been helpful? Something for us to put the wet napkins on so they could be removed! But what’s next is even better! Our server was kind enough to bring the napkins along with our food. She left the tray with our food on the empty table beside ours while we cleaned the spilled drink. She was “going to get fresh silverware” which never arrived.

So, we served our own food, placed the pile of wet napkins, ice, etc on the empty tray and sat down to finally enjoy our meal. Much to our dismay, our food was cold. It had been sitting somewhere so long that the mashed potatoes had a film on the top. A fork stood straight up in the hash brown casserole and the eggs looked like dried plastic. When the server came to refill our drinks…still no fresh silverware…we let her know that our food was cold. She said she’d go to the kitchen to see what she could do. She left the plates on the table.

The manager came to the table and asked what’s wrong, we explained that the service has been bad and the food is cold. She offered us a free dessert. Seriously? No thanks. She goes on and on and finally tells us that she is going to comp the meal. Ya think? I wasn’t planning on paying for inedible food. The manager then goes to all of the tables around us and asks how their service was…all of them complained. Imagine that!!! Save yourself the trouble, eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!! You’ll never get that 90 minutes of...

This review is only based on service not food.

My family went to this crackle barrel after my grandfathers funeral and we had a large party which the restaurant accommodated. We had two different servers, Kyle and Shay. The food came out quickly and everything was fine until the bill came out.

We had several tables but the group was all sitting in the same section. I guess Shay was responsible for collecting the bill and she decided to go to the only table that had 80+ year olds to discuss the bill. I heard her explain to my grandma that the restaurants computer “crashed” and there was no way to split the bill. Keep in mind we had 8 separate tables…. I could tell my grandma wasn’t really understanding what she was saying (again she’s 80+ years old & her husband just died) and Shay was very pushy about getting it all on to one bill. It was very apparent she was trying to get one bill for whatever reasons (higher tip or ease for her).

My grandma walked up to pay the bill and I went to the cashier to complain that we had 8 tables of mixed family members. We were not one table & we should have separate bills like everyone else, but my grandma proceeded to pay to just move on.

Next Shay walked up to my grandma again after she paid and said that “tips are not included on any of the checks”. Please keep in mind there were around 20 50 years & lower adults sitting in this section that could have been the point of contact for payment. Clearly my grandma just didn’t understand what was going on with the bill or tips. 100% our family is going to tip, but to keep coming up to the oldest person in the room seemed ridiculous and gave a sense of “let’s ask the confused old lady to give us more money”.

My grandma just had to finish a funeral service for her husband of 40+ years. Even though Shay might have not known that, don’t go up to the confused old lady to get her to pay the bill then make sure it’s clear she didn’t leave a tip by accident.

We did leave cash tips from each table, but honestly this experience was extremely disheartening...