Taco Bell — Restaurant in Virginia

Third edit:

It's... Getting better? Lol.

They fixed the ice machine a while ago! Yaaay! But the soda is flat half the time, odd?

Front door is broken now, see how many weeks that takes to fix. 😂 Seriously, how does a place built less than a year ago have so many maintenance issues?

Overall, I feel food accuracy has improved in recent weeks/months (we eat too much taco bell XD ) but maybe we have just gotten lucky?

Still happy we have this place, but it is literally a wild card, it's a running joke in our family where we will be in the car and say "Wana go to Taco Bell for lunch and see what happens this time?" Lol, it's a good time if you check your expectations.

Second edit:

What is going on with the ice machine? I think it's been down for 3 weeks now. Ooofta. Soda is warm and flat.

I had a staff member insult an order I made. His words were: "I dunno how you consume that, I find it disgusting."

So yeah, what I wrote in my last update is quite critical. The staff here needs A LOT of work. Having your employees call your businesses own food disgusting, ain't the best of sales practice, just saying.

Then, last time I brought the wife here, it was comical. The guys behind the counter seem to struggle in assembling a taco. When we got a few supreme tacos, the sour cream was a single dollop in the middle. I know it seems nitpicky, but also putting a strip of sour cream down the whole taco should be easy. Other tacos come half folded and a mess in the wrapper -.-

It sucks, cause I'm actually trying REALLY hard to only say good things about this place, and every time we come back, we just get more disappointed with the place. It's actually comical at this rate.

We will probably just go back to driving to Grand rapids and getting our Taco Bell fix from there at this rate. (We live in Hibbing.) Never had these issues over in Grand rapids.

Edit after two months: I probably go here about weekly. What a lot of the negative reviewers are saying is accurate. (My original review still stands.)

Unfortunately I see a staffing issue. About half the staff here don't give a sht about being at their job. (I get it, fastfood is a btch.) This is par for the course for Virginia as I regularly eat out all across the Northland (Duluth to Grand rapids) and it just seems like the pool of workers in Virginia are just "built different". So I'm just assuming Taco Bell is doing what they can with what they have to work with. (Tip to upper management if you are reading, just stealth visit this store, there are at least two workers who would be an almost immediate fire IMO, and they ain't hard to pick out. - if they are working that day obviously)

Basically they either need to clean house and rehire, or do a retrain.

Still love me some Taco Bell and hope they sort out the kinks, cause I Wana see this fast food restaurant succeed!

(Also, why has the brand new ice machine been down for like a week? Oof.)

Original review:

Love me some Taco Bell!

However, I hope the current hours posted are temporary until they get settled in. I drive through Virginia every day anywhere between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. This place really needs to open around 7 AM honestly.

Midnight hours would be great for late night Taco...

UPDATE: we decided to give this specific Taco Bell another try given that we are such huge Taco Bell fans as it's the nearest one within an hour drive from our home. This 2nd experience was so much better than our first visit. The drive thru time was reasonable, the order was correct, the restaurant wasn't out of potatoes, the food was hot/fresh and most importantly, whomever was making the food made the refried beans correctly, no repeat of the straight out of the can awfulness of our first experience. Not sure yet if this is a "permanent" improvement or lucking into best crew/right time...

Post about first visit: Told after paying for order and waiting awhile that they'd run out of potatoes, forced to substitute something I didnt want that was the same price per item, had to order/pay separately for the substitution I did want because they refused when I offered to pay the difference. The food did not all come out together. And in all honesty, the food was awful, worst I've ever had from taco bell (and I've been a customer for decades, been to many taco bells in many locations, never experienced anything like this, the Mexican pizza and burrito supreme were inedible because they seem to have scooped solid/dry refried beans right out of the can vs. The normally creamy texture its supposed to have. Worst experience ever, id give them 0 stars if I could, and im a huge taco bell fan... their operation and customer service needs a...

The only thing consistent about this store is that the order is always disastrously wrong. We have tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, but we are not seeing any improvements. It's a running joke in the family at this point. First, don't even bother getting a drink, the machine is either broken, out of ice, or only dispenses flat pop. The food is constantly laughable. On our last trip, my daughter ordered 3 of the same bean and cheese burrito, all 3 were completely different. One was bean and cheese, one was bean cheese and onion, one was bean cheese onion and red sauce. I ordered 3 crunchy supreme tacos. The first was missing tomatoes and sour cream, the second was only meat and lettuce, the third was only meat and cheese. I would like to point out, they were not busy, there was only us and one other table in the restaurant, and one small car in the drive through. They were well staffed. This is not the first time food has been delivered like this. If we bring up it's wrong it either gets made wrong again or comes out thrown together in such a disaster. Virginia is a 20 minute drive for me, I think from now on if we want Taco Bell we will just drive another 20 and head to rapids. Never have we had an issue...