Pancheros Mexican Grill - Waukee — Restaurant in Waukee

Tonight was the straw that broke the camel's back for me at the Waukee Panchero's. There was NO rice. That's right. I went in at 8:30 - 8:45PM to the store which says it closes at midnight (they were clearly closing up early based on the rugs being pulled, etc.) and they had no rice left... HOW DO YOU NOT HAVE RICE!? They might as well be out of tortillas, meat, or queso if they are going to run out of rice that far ahead of closing time. I mean that's like Subway running out of lettuce for their sandwiches, or McDonald's running out of cheese for their burgers.

To be fair to the employee who served me, I think he did a great job offering me free extra meat and queso as well as re-wrapped my burrito when it tore when he wrapped it the first time to try to compensate. I almost walked out when he said "we don't have any rice left" but decided to go through with it. I regret that decision. The burrito ended up having a lot of corn in it despite me not ordering corn and also not seeing the employee put corn in my burrito as he made it. Corn magic I guess? It was also super messy which I kind of expected. But wait there's more...

When I heard they were opening a Panchero's in Waukee, I was so excited and waited anxiously for about a year for it to finally open up. I've been going to Panchero's for close to 15 years now, starting with the store on Cedar Rapids' West side. I frequented the Iowa City and Coralville locations as a Hawkeye, and now most often visit the Jordan Creek location. As a fan of the franchise, I honestly wish it wouldn't have opened the Waukee location at all.

I've been there probably 5 - 10 times and I have yet to have what I'd call a "good"' experience. Every time I go, the staff seem to have just started that week. I can deal with that as turnover happens and expertise only comes when people stick around. But the management staff, while friendly, seems to show no sense of urgency. It is the slowest service of any Panchero's I've ever been to and honestly people are not going to come back just because you chatted with them while you made their food. I've gotten my food faster at the Iowa City location with the line out the door than the Waukee location with maybe 5 people in front of me. In addition, I have also had issues with staff not listening to instructions. For example "extra rice, no beans" and instead I get normal rice and then asked "what kind of beans?" Or when I have said "light beans" and either other people get an insane amount of beans and I really got light beans, or the staff just don't listen. I have found that generally the tortillas are under cooked at this store as well. I even tried ordering ahead through the app hoping that would make a difference and while the process of getting my food was easier, my burrito was still very underwhelming.

I'm not sure what the issue is, but I honestly think it would be best to close the store, insure that your team is trained and ready, and then re-open. Focus on expedience and consistency. And no matter what, never, ever, ever run out of rice under any circumstances. There is literally a hy-vee in the same parking lot so there's really...

You can tell not one person working here has had any training on how pancheros usually is ran. We have been to pretty much every pancheros in the DSM metro and this was by far the worst one.

It's a brand new location, the store itself is just as nice as the others but we walked in to a massive line, which I know is normal, with all the employees practically just standing behind the counter. There were 4 employees plus a manager up front. Typically a line the size of the one we were in takes about 10 minutes becuase the employees are usually really fast and courteous. Not this time. We were in line for almost 45 minutes. 2 people would work on one order, while one person was making tortillas and then just standing there the rest of the time. For every single order. The only one doing their job was the cook in the back making chicken. The manager would only be up front to check someone out and then either watch the two employees making one order or he'd walk in the back and practically wait 5 minutes for the next person to be ready to check out. At one point we had to wait for one of the employees to change out every single topping they offer and then just stand there to wait for the guy making the tortillas to finally heat one up for the customer standing in front of him becuase he was just standing there watching her - instead of helping her becuase there were 40 people in line.

When I finally got to get my burrito, the counter was absolutely disgusting. All the sauces, corn, and lettuce were everywhere and they were completely out of cheese. Which if you're busy may happen but the employee made it seem like it's just something they don't offer. She then wrapped my burrito and busted it, asked for a rewrap, then just spilt the contents of my burrito into a new tortilla and threw the ripped one away. Usually pancheros just wraps over the old tortilla. I lost a decent amount of food due to that, and it wasn't the only time she had ripped one in the time I was standing there. Again I'm not so sure they were even trained for their positions. They were all very slow and not professional. The girls kept stopping to just talk to one another, and not once did anyone apologize for the wait (for them to mess around) or thank us for coming.

We will not be going back to...

I don’t eat Pancheros very often, but I decided to try it again, highly disappointed! And after reading most of these reviews, I don’t think that anything has changed in the last two weeks of the last disappointing review so working on it is not working out for you guys unfortunately. I ordered a steak quesadilla, three small tortillas and chips and queso, and spent $14 and some change. And I threw everything away, except for one tortilla that I ate. I don’t do many reviews, but maybe this one will help Pancheros get it, right. My steak quesadilla literally had a few meat in there and it was like the middle and not spread. It was just clumped in the middle of the tortilla. They did a pour cut, so I had to pull it apart as you can see there was either hardly any meat and the meat that was there was not meat. It was pretty rubbery fatty or very dry. I don’t even know what it was supposed to taste like there was so much seasoning on there that I couldn’t taste anything but salt and whatever seasoning you put on there. As you can see, I ordered individual tortillas. They were supposed to be small I mean I guess I shouldn’t be mad that they were ginormous. However, they were very rubbery so I only ate one and the queso dip and chips. The chips were good. They were not stale, but the cheese was so thick and clumpy. I could barely push a trip through it, and when I was able to push all the way through it, and it was thick, the texture was like a rubbery type of food. I don’t even know how to explain it, but it was not good. The one thing I liked about it was your customer service was nice. Just very depressing to spend money when I should’ve just saved it because it was...