Sonic Drive-In — Restaurant in Wayne Township

Updated 5/7/23 back down to 1 star. Stopped by tonight for a shake. Pulled into a kiosk and was told "I'm sorry but at this time we are only taking drive through orders" 😅 It never ends with this place 🤣

Updated 4/14/23 from 1 to 3 stars to reflect that Sioux Falls Sonic has repaired a good number of broken kiosks and I haven't had a kiosk button time out for a while.

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Sonic of Sioux Falls is a perpetual disappointment. The food is usually good, but the staff here seems to enjoy testing the limits of customer's patience. It's obvious this crew is passionate about providing their customers with the lowest levels of customer service possible, and the highest levels of passive-aggressive behavior imaginable. It's somewhat remarkable how committed workers at this location are in finding creative new ways to disappoint customers, even after we thought Sioux Falls Sonic couldn't possibly get any worse than our last visit.

When you pull into Sonic, half of the kiosks for the drive-in will be labeled "out of order". You might also discover a sign on the drive-thru menuboard or an employee car parked in from of it with a sign that informs you that the drive-thru is closed. It makes it even more frustrating that you can't order even though the place is half empty. Apparently there's nights that they can only serve 7 customers at a time. The kiosks on the south side of the parking lot are basically ALWAYS "Out of order" and have been since at least 2015 when I moved to town.

If you DO manage to find a working stall to order, you'll sometimes have to push the button a few times. You'll learn that the button will time out after about 5 minutes and you'll have to push it again. Expect to do this at least once before they take your order, and then expect to wait another 20-600 minutes for food.

Good luck, you'll need it.

**Edited to remove an exchange I had with Sonic corporate after they left a boilerplate response acting like they didn't know about these issues. I thought maybe they would actually make an improvement, but the only result was that it made my review hard to read. Nothing changed, and it likely never will.

My original review still stands as the best representation of this establishment, and it was written years before the pandemic. This isn't a "supply chain issue" or an issue due to "labor shortage" it's a management/employee/corporate issue that has been persistent for at least half a decade...

My brother just received a call from Sonics manager, who was sarcastic and dismissive in telling us our order shows up as an error and that they cant put our order through. Followed by, "you just shouldn't order from us anymore, we don't want you to have a terrible experience that your having now." Word for word and as sarcastically as possible. That was the manager...The order: 1 grape slushie, 1 watermelon slushie, and a cup of ice water... my brother who put the order in for my two kids doesn't care, but I do. I went over to wait in line and pick it up. I didn't say anything or even ask about the issue with the order from before. I instantly could figure out what the issue was. The two young women who were goofing off with each other visibly from the drive through lane, couldn't hear me and began visibly mocking me. Clearly forgetting we could Clearly see them. Pull up to the window and they give me all the wrong sizes that I had just order. That parts my fault, I didn't know what the sizes looked like but my kids did. I ask for a drink carrier, she looks at me and keeps handing me drinks. after they walk away from the window one of them grapples on to the other while the dope of a manager stands there smiling. It's rare for our family of service members to be able to get together very often and all my brother wanted to do was get a simple treat for his niece and nephew. Amazing, such a simple small thing can truly ruin an otherwise pleasant trip. Clearly a very loosely ran ship and an embarrassment of an establishment. Thats what we get for coming to a small town, We will never order from this business again. Owners...

As I'm sure others have mentioned, this Sonic location has significantly gone downhill over the past few years. We very rarely order from there anymore.

We decided to take a chance tonight and we ordered ahead using the mobile app to prevent issues when we got there. The stalls were only half full but there was a long drive-thru line, so we anticipated a wait, but we didn't anticipate waiting over 30 mins for a 3 drink order to be ready. In addition, our completed order sat there for 10 minutes before I decided to mask up and go in.

I'm glad I did because what I saw shows me that we'll probably never eat there again... There were 5 employees in there. A teenage male doing all the running, a teenage girl handling all the orders, a shift manager running the drive-thru, and 2 teenage boys that were supposed to be running the empty fryers and cooktops but we're instead texting. I'd like to note that the only person wearing a mask was the runner, so the risk of exposure is pretty high. The ice cream blender was overflowing on the floor, cooked and uncooked food was all over the floors and make tables, etc. The only level-headed person in the room appeared to be the teenage girl who reminded the shift manager and runner to take one thing at a time.

I'm appalled by what I saw for so many reasons and I pray that nobody is exposed due to this restaurant. I plan to email corporate as well. I realize this is one review out of a slew of reviews but this isn't a one-time occurrence. Based on our experiences, especially over the summer, this appears to be the way this store...