Brobagel — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

I never leave reviews but have to echo what others have said on the puzzling bad service. The employees are nice enough - but somehow not a single one seems to have a clue how to efficiently make a simple bagel sandwich. Here’s how my visit went:

Place simple order at register - 1 bacon egg cheese sandwich on everything with pepper jack cheese, 1 bacon egg cheese sandwich on plain with cheddar cheese

Go to pay at register - $27. Hmm, $4.50 sandwiches and 2 bottled drinks from the cooler? Look at ticket - it has 2x brobagel club sandwiches at $8/ea. Ok - just a little mistake no big deal. They voided my initial transaction and charged me the right price.

After 20 mins of waiting (and not many other orders or people coming in), checked to make sure they didn’t cancel the order on the line by accident due to the initial mix up. Nope - they’re working on it, just incredibly slowly.

Order is ready - thankfully decided to eat there. Both sandwiches have the wrong cheese, and mine somehow has lettuce and some sort of mayo-based sauce? How? It’s a bacon egg cheese sandwich. Every employee knew of the voided transaction / initial mixup. Seemed like they started making me the wrong sandwich, realized it, and then didn’t feel like taking the time to fix it / make it the right way. Just an incredible lack of care.

Ask them to make me a new one - which they did without issue. Now they’ve run out of plain bagels. Ok - pumpernickel, I can see there’s 2 left. “Sorry those are reserved for another order...” at this point I’ve been in the store at least 30 mins for a simple bagel sandwich and those bagels were there the entire time. Another order? When were they planning on making that other order? Now I feel bad for me and the other pour soul who’s missing their breakfast bagels too.

It was really incredible to see 6+ employees looking like they’re trying to work but getting absolutely nothing accomplished. Honestly seemed like the whole lot of them ate a bunch of edibles before work - which who cares, as long as you can still function, but if you can’t make a bagel sandwich in a bagel shop without messing up multiple times in under 30 minutes - that’s an issue.

This place wouldn’t last a month in New York.

As far as the actually quality of the food when I finally did get my sandwich, as others have mentioned it wasn’t even hot. Not sure how that was even possible. Overall the sandwich was decent, but definitely no where near worth dealing with the accompanied...

Poor quality and poor customer service. We live in the neighborhood so we walk by here all the time and decided to try it one day. The first time we tried it, we just ordered there from the walk up window, but that was a pretty terrible experience so we decided to order ahead online for pick up the second time. But back to the first time - why was it a terrible experience to order there? First of all, you cannot walk inside to order. They only let you pick up pre-ordered food inside, if you order there, you have to do it at the walk-up window. Fine, but there is not a clear system for where to stand in line and where to wait while they make your order so it is chaotic and confusing and every time someone new walks up they have to check with everyone to figure out if they are in line or waiting. Next, it took a ridiculously long time for them to make our 2 bagels so we waited a very long time standing there on the crowded sidewalk. At least that first time; however, the bagels were made well with generous portions of lox and we were satisfied with the quality and value.

Fast forward to today where we decided to get it a second time but learned from our first experience and ordered ahead online this time. First off, let me say that when I placed the order, the estimated time was 10-15 minutes. We walked over and I didn’t get the text that my order was ready until 35 minutes later. Fine, not a big deal, we pick it up and head home. We open our bagels and this time they are rock hard like they had been sitting out all night and day, they are burnt, and there is only one piece of salmon on each of them. Total 180 from our first experience. Surely this must have been a mistake right? So I fill out the help inquiry on my email order confirmation and explain the quality issue. I’m met with an immediate response from the GM rudely telling me that they make their bagels the same way every time and all portions are pre-measured blah blah blah. They did offer me a complimentary lox and bagel next time but it’s just not worth it to me, I won’t be back. Poor quality and poor service, it’s a no from me. There are plenty of other places to get lox and bagels from in the area that I don’t have to worry about busting a tooth from...

My wife and I arrived at 11am on a Sunday; the place was not very busy. We waited 15 minutes for 2 subpar bagel sandwiches despite there being at least half a dozen workers arranged in an assembly line.

The bagels were not fresh, even though this was peak time on a Sunday. My lox sandwich had a pathetically small amount of lox (picture added), unripe tomatoes even though it is prime season, and fell apart after one bite because it was poorly constructed, being overstuffed with bland vegetables. The cream cheese was not spread evenly, and was pretty cold and stale.

The worker who took our order did not offer us the option of toasting our bagels. 5 minutes after ordering, my wife asked if the bagels could be toasted, and they told us it was too late. We figured that meant our sandwiches were almost ready, but we waited 10 more minutes, so clearly they hadn't even started our order. Toasting and/or fresher, warmer bagels could've helped the stale cream cheese situation immensely.

The layout of the store also speaks to how poorly managed this operation is: you walk to the back to order, they give you a receipt, you walk to the front and pay, and then you wait, all the while bumping into other patrons coming in and out of the store. I think the idea is that you order at the back, and by the time you've paid at the front, your order has gone through the assembly line and it's ready - their execution is not (yet) at that level. The manager needs to step in.

For a city that loves food, Chicago does bagels and bagel-operations very poorly. A business-minded person could visit one of dozens of smaller operations in New York...