11 Common Complaints About Applebee's

Applebee's is known as the friendly neighborhood grill and bar, and you might ask, what's not to love about that? The restaurant chain scores pretty highly on the popularity stakes, mostly thanks to a series of pocket-friendly offers that include the iconic Applebee's all-you-can-eat menu, offering a $15.99 buffet bonanza with everything from wings to riblets to shrimp.

This doesn't mean that the restaurant has escaped clean of any complaints, however. On the contrary, some recurring issues keep being brought up by customers who find that their experience did not live up to the good food and neighborly hospitality we've all come to expect from Applebee's. Complaints range from slow or inattentive service to cold, poorly cooked, or reheated-tasting food, with diners also accusing the chain of shortchanging them when it comes to portion size.

We scoured the internet, checking sites like Reddit, ConsumerAffairs, and Trustpilot to find out the real deal behind the most common complaints. What we found was that some issues do seem to keep cropping up about Applebee's.

No one expects to have to wait for an hour to be served food at their neighborhood grill, right? Yet, this is exactly what a reviewer on Consumer Affairs claims happened to them. They explain, "We had to wait 30 minutes for our drinks & to order our food. And almost an hour to get our food." To make matters worse, the reviewer says that this wasn't because the restaurant was crowded, but simply because the servers were busy having a nice chat among each other.

This is no trivial complaint. Slow service is actually one of the red flags to look out for when eating at a diner. Now, we get it, everyone can have a slow day. The problem is that this doesn't seem to be a rare and random event, with the food arriving late being one of the most common complaints levied about Applebee's.

Another customer describes how their group order ended up arriving at different times, with the shrimp arriving so late that everyone else had finished their food by then. Staring at everyone else as they eat while you try to look nonchalant has to rank high on the list of annoying restaurant experiences.

Here's something else guaranteed to ruin your dinner outing — cold food. Applebee's has attracted more than its fair share of complaints from customers saying that food was not reheated properly. A customer on Consumer Affairs describes a pretty unacceptable scenario, describing "half of my food being cold and tasting like it was microwaved."

This may not be quite what anyone has in mind when thinking of fast food. Other reviewers have noted a terrible combination of slow service, no water refills, and icy cold steak. Cold food is a frequent issue faced by large food chains, also being a common complaint at McDonald's. Applebee's is sadly building this same kind of reputation, with another customer warning that the only thing we can expect from the chain is cold food.

Is there anything worse than food that feels like it has a coating of grease? It's a myth that fried foods must necessarily taste oily, despite what some believe. Reheating can give some food a greasy texture, though, and the end result is very unlikely to be appetizing. Sadly, this is something that it appears some Applebee's outlets still need to learn.

The truth is, diners don't like being given food that's slimy and obviously reheated, and they're happy to call out the chain on this. One customer on Consumer Affairs says, "The sandwich was greasy and the meat was prepacked strips of some tough beef." There are many ways to prepare a good steak sandwich, but reheating one needs to be done very carefully to get a good result.

The problem appears to extend to burgers and chicken. A Reddit commenter sounds the death knell with a review that doesn't cut corners, saying they "hated how 'microwaved' it looked and felt. Nothing about the entree I got [looked] like it was actually prepared, instead just warmed up."

When a Consumer Affairs review starts off with the words "served RAW steak" with striking upper case letters, well, then you know that things are about to get lively. Unless someone actually asks for steak tartare, raw beef is hardly what you expect to arrive at your table.

There are plenty of other customers complaining of the opposite too, mind you. We can literally feel the pain in one Trustpilot review, which says, "I ordered Medium Rare and it [came] out well done." Others describe their meat as having that leather-like consistency that comes from having been overcooked or reheated too many times.

So is Applebee's guilty of undercooking food, or of overdoing it? Apparently, both. The litany of complaints implies that it's a hit-or-miss affair whether your food is served underdone or overdone at Applebee's. In short, don't expect your steak to be on point.

For most of us, getting takeout is a treat, and woe befall anyone who tries to mess with that. Enter Applebee's, where too many customers complain about ordering one thing and receiving another. Or, worse still, not receiving it at all. A couple describes their food ordeal on Trustpilot, saying, "Last time they forgot to put my french onion soup in the bag. This time they gave my wife only steak and potatoes with her entree and forgot to give us the [vegetables]."

There's a whole chorus of other similarly dissatisfied customers online, reporting missing various items, including the sauces. The moral of the story is that it's best to go to your local Applebee's in person, so you can check your order on the spot. This is actually a good tip for ordering takeout more generally, and it's exactly what another customer on Consumer Affairs says she does, to varying degrees of success, explaining, "I order online and pick up in store. My order is rarely prepared correctly; there's always something wrong with the order."

Going to Applebee's and leaving hungry? Impossible, we'd say. Except that too many customers are complaining about prices going up and portion sizes going down, leading to exactly that. This Consumer Affairs reviewer doesn't mince words, saying, "The prices have [gone] up drastically and the portions have been really suffering for size," adding, "just had a salad and went away hungry."

This is pretty much the worst thing that you can say about a restaurant. They have one job, and that's to make sure you're well-fed. Yet, we continue reading about diners who feel that they've been anything but. Another, on Trustpilot, says that "portions have become so disappointing while prices have continued to go up." Others describe the chicken tenders as having gone down in size by half, as have other dishes. The collective review about portion size seems to be, simply, Applebee's needs to do better.

For a chain that made the words "neighborhood restaurant" part of its brand, it's surprising to discover that the customer service at Applebee's can be less than friendly, and even inefficient. Sadly, online reviews are rife with tales about servers and bartenders who ignore diners for too long, and who are downright rude when called out on it. One customer bemoans her bad experience on Consumer Affairs, describing how "the bartender never [acknowledged] us. Kept helping the other customers that kept coming in after us."

Another diner describes a similarly dismaying experience on Trustpilot, saying, "Went for dinner, waitress was extremely rude, she forgot my order and when I asked she was rude and defensive." The word "rude" is used in quite a few other online reviews, so it can hardly be a forgivable fluke. Maybe the staff simply need to be reminded about the importance of neighborly good manners.

We don't know about you, but for us, if there's one thing that's more important than the food or service itself, that is cleanliness. After all, no one wants to finish off their dining experience with an unexpected visit to the hospital. One would think that a huge chain would have no issues understanding and implementing this, but judging by a number of common complaints about Applebee's, this isn't quite true. We won't repeat exactly what one customer said about the smell of Applebee's in Maysville. Suffice it to say that most customers would back out in a heartbeat, which is exactly what this diner did.

Now, let's be clear. One swallow does not a summer make, so we're not going to take one single complaint as the definitive judgment on the restaurant's level of cleanliness. However, there are plenty of other reviews to corroborate this view. On Trustpilot, one guest writes about the awful smell, saying, "Daughter went to rest room were sewage was backing up."

It gets worse, with some diners reporting seeing things like rodents, which truly have no place in any dining area. As one Reddit user said about an Applebee's near Easton, "I and another customer noticed a mouse fall from the ceiling near the kitchen/bathroom area." Thanks, but no.

Remember how ordering takeouts can be a hit-or-miss affair at Applebee's? Turns out, the issue is not just about the servers not packing the right items. It goes a bit deeper, with the app and the online ordering system reportedly being extremely frustrating to use, and leading to a number of errors. Just logging in can be a saga, with the app reportedly being confusing to use.

Even if you do manage to log in, it doesn't mean you'll finish off your order successfully, and customers have mentioned that paying can be a problem. Others mention an even more frustrating issue — wrong billing. A review on Apple's App Store says that "they need to fix the [app's] system because it definitely does not add up the numbers properly," saying it took over 45 minutes just to put in an order. No prizes for guessing which end of the scale Applebee's would go on a ranking of food delivery services.

It seems like Applebee's technical problems are quite consistent — so much so that even accessing gift card promotions can be a headache. Many customers outright exhort us to avoid the chain's gift cards altogether, as it's a story that never ends well. One Consumer Affairs review says, bluntly, "Never buy promotion gift cards," explaining that their first $50 card worked perfectly, but the second was a total fail as she never received the link to activate it. That's $50 down the drain, which is not insubstantial.

One Reddit commenter goes a step further, with an accusation that "Trying to order Applebee's gift cards online is a total waste of time and, quite possibly, a scam to harvest credit card information." Whatever the reasons, one thing's for sure — if you're after a good deal, it's better to look for food loyalty programs that actually pay off, rather than hoping Applebee's will deliver on its voucher promises. Too many customers claim to have been short-changed when redeeming them, so they may not be worth the risk.

Those of us with food allergies or dietary needs know about the importance of making sure we know exactly what we're eating. Cross-contamination occurs when things are transferred from one food, surface, or utensil to another, which can include allergens and even harmful bacteria. Preventing it is essential to ensure food is safe for all diners to eat.

According to the chain's own employees, Applebee's does not do a good job of preventing this. One explains on Reddit, "I worked at an Applebee's and nothing was safe. Everything was cross-contaminated." Pretty damning, from someone with firsthand experience. Diners with celiac voice their suspicions that Applebee's fries aren't safe because of how they're fried. For diners with allergies, even trace exposure can trigger a serious reaction, making Applebee's a place that these customers should probably avoid.