Courtney’s New York Bagels & Deli — Restaurant in Wake Forest

Despite the negative reviews regarding service and possible sanitation issues, I gave this place a shot because my years of food service experience have shown an unhappy customer is more likely to leave a review than a happy one. Unfortunately I was wrong here, but let me preface: I am NOT unhappy, I just think they have some major improving to do.

On a positive note, these were the BEST bagels I've had outside NYC in years: soft inside, crunchy outside, with great flavor, though a bit sweeter than I prefer. They offer a decent variety of bagel flavors, cream cheeses, cheeses, and meats, including Taylor ham/pork roll (which I don't see much down here) and Boar's head deli meats. However, the service leaves much to be desired.

Many employees seemed young and unhappy to be there. The employee who took my order seemed completely spaced out. I had to ask a question twice to get any reaction/response from him. He was also very mumbly and quiet, which was frustrating being hard-of-hearing, and generally didn't seem to care. Once I ordered, HE went to the back to make my food. He did not wash his hands before putting on gloves, which is an obvious sanitation issue, especially after possibly handling money all day. I don't typically care about the actual sanitation score, but that is a very obvious, yet disregarded, risk for cross-contamination and foodborne illness.

Despite being only the 2nd person in line at a non-peak time, with at least 5 or 6 employees in the place, I waited almost 10 minutes for a simple bagel sandwich and a toasted bagel with cream cheese. The employee moved at a painfully slow pace.

I can confirm there's a surcharge for credit/debit transactions but quite honestly, that doesn't bother me. We're in the age of rising costs all around and if I'd rather tap my phone than pull the cash out of my wallet, I'm fine shouldering that minimal cost (especially in light of the obvious cross-handling risks).

Overall, the management needs to improve service, efficiency, and sanitation. My suggestion: have dedicated employees for registers and food prep to avoid cross-handling and allow employees to become more efficient at their designated station.

To be honest, I'll probably be back for the excellent bagels (hopefully with lox back in stock), but I will definitely avoid peak times and budget extra time. I can't imagine how bad the wait must get during a rush.

I truly hope whoever reads these reviews doesn't just write us off as upset customers and actually heeds our advice and revamps their service model or at least talks to their employees about picking up the pace and not acting like the customers are an inconvenience. They've got great food; they just need to step up their service...

My family was coming to NYC bagel up until today. After how I was treated, we will not be returning. I noticed that the lady that was at the register had difficulty keying in my husband’s order that he wanted no mushrooms on his philly cheese steak. It was busy today so maybe she was overwhelmed.

When we received our food, mine happened to be wrong. I ordered a bagel, nova, lettuce and cream cheese. Instead, I got a nova cream cheese spread on a bagel with lettuce. I politely said it was not made correctly and returned the sandwich. I got the corrected sandwich, with the retort that I had to now pay the difference. If I knew that there was going to be an upcharge to correct my sandwich that was an employee’s fault, I would have just settled for the incorrect sandwich since it wasn’t a horrible error. However, to tell a customer that not only sorry for the error, but pay for the workers mistake is ridiculous. I talked to the “manager” who was unwilling to see reason of how it’s horrible customer service to expect a customer to make up for the employees mistake, nor was it disclosed I was going to have to pay any difference.

My point is simple, I should have at the very least have the choice of keeping the incorrect sandwich at the price paid, or pay the difference of the sandwich to get it corrected. That option was stolen from me. I also think it’s poor taste to ask for a tip before we even get our food. It would have been a sad trade off, but to tell a customer to pay for an employees mistake is pitiful. It’s no skin off my nose to lose $6.50, but to have poor customer service that doesn’t know right from wrong is enough to keep me away. Believe me, they might have gotten $7.00 out of me (since they must be needing the money I will give them an extra 50 cents, if they are willing to lose a steady customer and have me pay for their employees mistake), but they lost hundreds more by their treatment. My family came in EVERY Sunday religiously. I will find a comparable place that knows what good customer service means and understands the value of...

I got to the shop today around 11:40 and placed an order with the green haired girl at the register. We ordered 4 bagel sandwiches (all on plain bagels), 3 plain bagels, and a side order of cream cheese. When the girl was taking our order she seemed in a daze and I had a feeling something was going to go wrong. After we got our order taken we stood off to the side to wait along with all the other people that were there. Everyone was getting their orders, even people who had came in a long time after us. One of the men behind the counter came up to us and asked us what we had ordered, once we told him our order they didn’t seem to have it in the back yet. We waited for over an hour when at 12:45 the girl with the green hair approached us and asked us if we could repeat our order because she had to write it down again, they had lost the original order sheet and we had been waiting for no reason because nobody was even making our food to begin with. She took our order and then brought it to the back, which then she comes back a few minutes later to ask us if we could choose different bagels because they are now out of the bagels that we had originally ordered when they had all of them when we ordered and paid initially. I asked for a refund and if there was a manager or shift leader, they said that they didn’t have any of those. We have been coming here for years, and the past few time we have gone there have been issues. This place has been seriously going down hill over the past couple months and I will not...