So Long, and Thanks for All the Chips (and salsa)
If you pay even just a little bit of attention to my social media activity, you probably have read my past rants about the downward spiral of Moe’s restaurant. My strong hunch is that this blog post will be my final Moe’s story, driving the proverbial nail in the equally proverbial coffin.
To quickly summarize those past rants:
The value ratio between cost and food has steadily declined. You now pay as much or more than other restaurants of this genre (Qdoba, Chipotle, etc.) for entrées that have become notably smaller. Not that I always want a huge entrée, but one that is significantly smaller than other places should not cost more to purchase. And no, Moe’s free chips and salsa aren’t adequate to make up the difference.
Even worse is that Moe’s has stingified (Is that a word? Made more stingy?) its rewards program, particularly the Moe Monday deal. It’s now only available if you are a rewards member, which I suppose is fine, but you have to order it in the app which always adds a mobile app convenience fee (no other restaurant does this). And, because it’s now a reward and not just the regular Monday price, it takes up the one-reward-at-a-time which means you can no longer pay for a Moe Monday order with earned reward credit.
Okay, now you’re caught up and ready for today’s likely final story.
I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry today and certainly wasn’t looking to spend $10+ on lunch. My thought was, a kid’s meal at Moe’s (steak quesadilla sounded good) is only $6.99, and because I’m not using another reward, I can finally make use of the $2-and-change reward credit I had remaining.
I placed an order at 12:55pm, walked in the store around 1:05pm, and gave my name to the check-out worker who replied that it was being worked on. (This was a lie, as you’ll soon learn.)
1:10pm—the time stated in the mobile app that my order would be ready. No food.
1:15pm—no food.
1:20pm—still no food. By this time, at least three (maybe four) different customers walked in and gave new orders at the counter, all after I placed my online order. Two of them had even paid and walked away.
Moments later, just as I was about to initiate words, the check-out worker confirmed my name, looked over toward the prep area, glared back at me, finished the final steps of helping a customer with their payment, then walked over to begin making my order which was, according to the employee, being worked on 20 minutes ago.
Keep in mind, this wasn’t my usual bowl entrée that can be built fairly quickly. It was a quesadilla which needed time on the grill.
Finally received my food around 1:30pm—a full 35 minutes after it was ordered from a store that was not particularly busy at the time.
The final clincher was that my hankering for a Dr Pepper was denied because the Coke Freestyle machine was on the fritz. Good thing I didn’t mind iced tea instead.
So…that’s it. I’m done patronizing Moe’s. If you ever find me there again, it’s either because someone else is treating, or I literally have no other choice due to circumstances at the time. They had a good run, but it’s over.
P.S. Okay, I’ll spin around to end this post with something positive—two things I can credit Moe’s for today:
- The worker handed me a regular size drink instead of the kids cup. That was nice.
- Either the kid’s meal quesadilla is huge (and a very good value), or the worker picked up that I wasn’t pleased at the delay and made an adult-sized quesadilla instead. Either way, that, too, was nice.
