Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Waverly

I am not typically a fan of chain restaurants. I left impressed with the entire late night staff on Friday, August 23, 2024.

We had been at an event all day nearby. Applebee's was next to our hotel. We stopped for a late night beer and grabbed a half price appetizer. We kept it simple and ordered the waffle fries with cheese sauce and bacon. It was just what we needed.

Back to the staff~ apparently the manager just turned 18 at this establishment. The oldest person working was 23. 3 employees front of house, 3 in the kitchen. I'm in the business and was so impressed by what I saw. It was busy. Youth all over eating. Food lined up in the window. Servers taking the food out to their tables. Once the kitchen staff got caught up they came to help the servers deliver the food. That is not something that happens! This group of young adults worked like a well old machine. Polite and working hard together.

A few people joined us at the bar. They got a few appetizers and were also very impressed. I would actually come to this Applebee's again late at night on a Friday to see if this crew was working again.

I read some negative reviews that I can only assume aren't taking about this amazing crew that was working when I was there.

Keep up the great work, team! Thank you for your stellar...

Saturday night around 6:30pm, myself and 2 business friends decided to have dinner here. We are greeted with dirty utensils and a single napkin for the 3 of us. The waitress comes and takes our orders. All appears fine when a short time later, my friends get their steak and shrimp meals (one with no onion tanglers) before their appetizer. Meanwhile, my only item, a plate of nachos, is nowhere to be found. After they finish their meals, I'm still waiting for the nachos. The waitress FINELY comes by to explain that they're out of nachos. I've been waiting OVER an hour for these nachos. She then explained that they are out of riblets, onion tangles, and bacon as well as a host of other things. She asks if I want something else to eat, but explains it will be "awhile" before I can get it. So I declined and asked for the manager. That person refuses to come to the table because they/them are too busy putting out other fires for other tables. They send a supervisor that is there helping from the waterloo store. That person apologizes and offers a free dessert for my hassles. I end up eating cold pizza at my hotel.

I wasted 2 hours of my life in this place and had nothing to show for it. I'm just putting this out there, so...

TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE. Got told it was a 10 minute wait, waited 25 minutes. Got seated at a booth with a table that felt like it was covered in maple syrup, had used napkins on the seat and footprints on the seat. When our server (Delanie) greeted us we asked to be moved and were told we couldn’t move seats and she rolled her eyes when we asked for the table to be wiped. The host was kind enough to do it for us. We ordered water with lemon, the lemons still had stickers on them. I ordered a quesadilla burger and wanted no pink on the patty and my mom ordered a chicken tender basket. My burger came out pink anyway and my mom had RAW tenders. When she finally decided to come check on us we told her the issues and she grabbed our plates and said she’d have the kitchen fry the tenders longer and put my patty on the grill again. When she took it to the back we could hear the kitchen staff talking really loudly. We looked over and they were laughing and pointing at us. We were obviously fully fed up at the point and we asked for a manager but even that wasn’t very helpful. No apologies, no refund. Nothing. Will not be returning. Save yourself the headache and eat...