Count me as one of the (apparently few) people who do like Applebee’s. There’s one less than five minutes away from me, and it always has decent food, even if the service is a little slow. My friend adores the place–he never gets anything but their sirloin. I decided to try it one day, and that piece of steak could have competed with any upscale steakhouse’s offering. Then there’s the dessert, which is nearly always a treat (only once was it kinda nasty). Who knows, maybe we just have a good chef.
I concur with all of the “not so impressed” impressions of Applebees. I think their food is nothing but deep fried crap smothered in sauce. I’ll only go to one when I’m forced to (or when relatives invite me and I may temporarily loose the battle with seeming too impolite). I have not, however, had any issues with the service at the place though.
What the hell do you people expect? These faux quirky restaraunts are just Dennys with a younger target market. They test market their food to make sre that it is mediocre enough to not offend anyone. Then they find a way to save a dime on each plate served and they fuck over their employees to save another dime or two. So that they are pissed off all the time. The turn over is increadable so no one ever knows what the hell they are doing. What really pisses me off is they are everywhere and they are all the same. “Your neighborhood bar and grill”. My ass. Its part of a huge wave of sameness that is sweeping across the world making everything the same everywhere. Aw fuck it .
Hi all. Don’t shoot me! I just started to work at an Applebees. We just opened on Monday, and I was trained for a week before we opened.
To cover a few things…
** Food times **
We (servers) are trained to have the food out in 13 minutes. If it’s not out in 15 we have to hunt down a manager. If these people aren’t doing their job… I don’t know how they’re keeping it…
If you don’t see your server often:
We are taught some teamwork-fucking-bullshit that has us “running” other peoples food. The kitchen yells “hot food runner” and we (anyone) snap to and grab the food. We’re not allowed trays b/c it doesn’t “promote teamwork”. Same with drinks, you run whatever drinks are there.
We (read I) would like to be there to take care of YOU as a customer, cause that’s what I’m getting tipped to do, and what I like to do, but in the interest of fucking “teamwork”, I could get fired for it. Go figure.
Foodwise…
Medium-well. If your server doesn’t get direction from you (and hence pass it on to the kitchen), your beef is cooked medium well.
As long as you don’t beat me, I’ll be here to apologize for sucky Applebees everywhere. I wanted to work there because I enjoyed the one I went to when I lived in Michigan.
If you want something that is sure to be yummy, get the desserts. All the desserts are delicious, I’m going to get so fat from working there.
That’s…pretty contrary to what I know. I’ve yet to work in a restaurant, but my impression was that for most places, each server had their designated section. Aside from busboys, I can’t really see the need for teamwork.
I like Applebee’s quite a bit, but it is definitely a hybrid of fast food joints and full service restaurants. This pretty much clinches it.
Blondiiiieeeee… 
Yeah, we do have designated sections. BUT, food and drinks are supposed to go out ASAP, so they don’t want the food waiting for the server. However, this affects my tip, I’m pretty sure, because the “guest” (NOT CUSTOMER) doesn’t see me enough to realize I really am taking care of them. Lest you think I’m just in here bitching about my job, we just opened, and I’m giving it a few weeks till I’m sure this job sucks that much ass.
I’ll give props to the Blondie ice cream thing.
I’ve only been to Applebee’s once, didn’t care enough to ever go back.
Don’t care for Chili’s limited menu.
Can’t stand Friday’s, and my idiot friends always want to celebrate birthdays there.
Outback Steakhouse is way too expensive for what you get.
Like the ribs at Texas Roadhouse, but not a fan of Roadhouse Grill.
Despise Olive Garden, but at least it is cheaper than the too-similar Italianni’s and Carabba’s.
Hate the food at Hooter’s, and refuse to go to a crappy restaurant just so a scantily-clad waitress can half-heartedly flirt with me. (They always sit down at the table with you here.)
Won’t ever go back to Denny’s after years of the worst service ever.
Don’t like anything on the menu at Red Lobster.
Steak and Ale = only for the “bring your own oxygen” crowd.
On the Border and Don Pablo’s are very mediocre chain Mexican places, but at least they have good portions.
But I don’t mind Bennigan’s (surprisingly), and love Cracker Barrel.
I’ve never eaten at an Applebee’s, or most of these places, but Smokey Bones is ok, Chili’s is good, and I absolutely love Cracker Barrel.
My city has a surprising number of good restaurants considering its size and location, and lots of variety - Italian, Thai, Japo-Korean, Greek, designer Pizza joints, deli’s, whatever. Also a double mittful of chain places: Lone Star, Kelsey’s (canuck TGIF etc), East Side Mario’s (canuck olive garden), Dennys etc.
New guy at work, just moved to town, was talking to me about trying to find his way around, and I sez, “the GREAT thing about this town is all the GREAT food and the variety, I could eat out three weeks straight and not have the same thing twice…”
Buddy says, “Oh, I know, I KNOW, you’ve got TWOEast Sider’s here!!!” Clearly an embarrassment of riches.
So I’m trying to sell up the local joints: “Oh, if you like italian, there’s Pesto’s and Gusto and Fazooli’s, they are all pretty good…”
New Guy: “Oh, I dunno, at East Sides you get all that free bread and salad! Would these other places give me that?”
Me, going back for more: “Well, I don’t know, but the menus have some interesting signature dishes and the decor at Gusto is pretty slick, and the prices are all reasonable, and besides, you’d be keeping the money at home…”
NG: “Yeah, but I sure do like all that free bread and salad.”
Me: sigh
I can’t understand why the homogeneity of these places doesn’t turn more people off. Then again, I have been in a few small towns where I think to myself, “This rustic diner in a pleasant little town on the main drag is sure to have some fine examples of local cooking…” and been treated to utter dreck. Most spectacular example of this was in a little town in Montana just before crossing into Alberta on a loooong road trip (I wanna say it was in Sunbury?) Roast beef po-boy with mashed potatoes. Grey meat, bread had a mold spot and the potatoes were inexplicably grainy and unpleasantly mushy at the same time. Waitress set the plates down and never came back. I left a nickel in the dead centre of my untouched plate and bogged outa there.
heh, I just posted my first gross.
Applebees does indeed suck. Flair is a joke (go see “Office Space”). But back to the “T.J. Yutzby’s: Your Neighborhood Brass and Stained Glass Place” as I prefer to call them.
The worst part is the recipes! I ordered garlic bread once at Applebees’s-- what came from the ‘kitchen’ was a Wonder Bread hotdog bun, soaked in yellow colored Crisco, then covered with cheap, way too salty, off-the-shelf garlic salt.
Utter crap. And just another symptom of other, still greater problems in our over-consuming culture.
I have mixed feelings about the whole “teamwork” thing in resteraunts. Yeah, it can help on a really busy night, but it can also hurt. At one resteraunt I worked at, I would be a runner every so often on really busy nights. Cool gig, good tips. But if someone else was running and I was serving, I hated it.
#1. It looks bad to your tables. A good majority of people in resteruants aren’t familiar with how they work. It looks bad when your drinks, food, bill and order is all taken by different people. It also makes the table feel as though they’re tipping the wrong person, or don’t know who to tip at all. (I’ve had tables look for me to tip me when I was running, and I’d have to explain that the server would tip me out at the end of the night).
#2. A lot of times tables would ask my runner for something (as I would find out later when they had to ask me a second time) and the runner would forget, or would try to tell me but not get a chance, or whatever. Also looks bad.
#3. If my table wanted to order something else, they’d tell the runner and the runner would then have to find me and tell me. Takes twice as long and you’re adding a middleman to the mix which heightens the chance for miscommunications/mistakes.
All in all, I think that “teamwork” should be employed only when necessary since it increases the risk of confusion and mistakes in a resteraunt environment. There was a reason why we only had runners on Friday and Saturday nights…