Applebee's Grill + Bar, Waterloo IA

Great salads. We sat at the bar. Unfortunately they were short staffed and the bartender was on her own and extremely busy!

Had a great breakfast. Our server Brittney was friendly and fast. Food came out fast. Just an overall great experience.

On August 28th (2023) myself and my co-manager took our three new hires out to lunch for their first day of employment with our company and chose Applebee’s as it was close to our store and has a variety of meals. The meal was decent, but the service was extremely disappointing.

As soon as we walked in around 12: 30 that afternoon, we saw almost an entire restaurant of empty tables. A female hostess wearing a bandanna greeted us 10 minutes after we arrived and asked us if a booth would be okay. As a group of 5 adults, there was no way we were going to fit in a booth. When we hesitated, she just said, “they are big booths”. My co-manager pointed out a table almost directly in front of us and asked if we could sit at one of those tables, to which she practically rolled her eyes and took us to the table.

We found our seats at the table and immediately had a waitress asking us if we were ready to order not even 2 minutes later, which we had yet to even open our menus. All of the silverware was thrown on top of a thin pile of napkins, which we found to be very unsanitary being out in the open and not wrapped in sets individually like you would commonly find at most restaurants.

We ordered appetizers, however they were delivered halfway through our meal due to the kitchen staff allegedly forgetting to put in the order for the appetizers. They did take half off the appetizers, which I do think they should not have charged us for them at all, but I did not say anything as we were just ready to leave at that point. Overall, the staff was not friendly and we rarely had anyone come check on our table.

This experience was overall disappointing, especially due to the fact that the restaurant was less than half full at lunch time, so you would think the service at the very least would have been decent. I wish we had chosen to go elsewhere to celebrate our new hires. This was my first and last time at this Applebee’s location and I will make sure to continue to patronize the Cedar Falls location from now on.

Not one of the better Applebee's, sorry.
Got the all you can eat wing's which were cold, the fries tasted like they were reheated in the microwave. The booth had a huge rip in the seat. I think it's time to do a little remodeling. In our area Happy Hour is at 3: 00pm not 9: 00pm. $3.50 Busch Light Brutus only shining light.

Wow - been a long time since I've walked into a restaurant with this bad of vibes. Half the tables were turned on their sides, not an employee to be seen anywhere. When the hostess did show up, she told us we had a ten minute wait, when they were lucky to have ten people in the entire place. They couldn't sit us and get us a beverage while they were figuring things out? I really felt like the real staff was in handcuffs in the kitchen, while these hoodlums were shushing us out so they could empty the cash registers. Just, wow.

Always good food great service. Go before the 6 PM crowd. You can be seated right away if you go early, they use the yelp app to put you in order if you need to wait. It usually don't really wait more that 15-20 minutes in your car before you can go in.

Service was horrible waited for someone to ask us what we wanted to drink for 20 mins then waited even longer for her to bring our drinks my sons drink wasn't the right drink. My drink she took to the wrong table then when our food did come they took that to the wrong table as well!

Absolutely terrible service. Wasn’t busy AT ALL but our waitress decided to take FOREVER. 10 minutes just waiting to get the bill, after asking TWICE. Unimpressed. Won’t be back.

The 3 cheese penne came out with no sauce and the wonton tacos had very little sauce. We requested sauce for both. They charged us for both sauces. We spoke to the server who directed us to the manager. The manager debated it with us and asserted that it was me. Eventually she relented and comped the penne sauce, “this time. ”

Got car to go, wonton tacos. The shells were either different or over cooked. They were quit hard.

Service was awesome. The food was good. Only complaint I had was there was more fat then meat I had

Service was slow. She was nice but took a long time. My food was actually delicious. We had fish and chips, chicken Alfredo and the club sandwich. It's not 5 Star, but we weren't expecting that. Beats fast food any day.

Here is the truth about Applebee's the all the server's, cook's and management are high as kite's or all of them are outside getting getting high.the store manager doesn't care what any of her staff does while at work

The food was ok, service was terrible. We went around 1pm they had a few tables but we were sat and waited 10 min a waitress finally came and introduced herself we ordered our drinks and appetizers and waited.drinks came (some other waitress brought them) 15 min later our appetizers came, we finally got to put the order in and waited 45 minutes during which our appetizer plates just sat at the table and our drinks were empty most of the time, our food finally comes (again a different waitress brought it) I requested refills and my salad that NEVER came she replied (I'm not your waitress ill let her know) 10 minutes later my Salad came I was almost done eating at this point but I start eating my salad and a 3rd waitress came by and grabs my food plate says "I'll get some of these out of the way" and grabbed my plate I informed her I wasn't done so she sets it back down.well she just stuck her finger in my mashed potato so I'm done now. But there were empty plates (including the appetizer plates and empty glasses) all over the table why would they take the ONLY plate someone was still eating off of? Anyway I will not be returning. I am a server myself and I have alot of patience when it comes to busy servers but there were maybe 5 tables and 3 waitresses no reason we should have waited that long and no reason at all for empty cups/poor service.

Polite staff, yummy food and drinks, but other customers in the restaurant were too loud for me to tolerate. Drunk people loudly singing the birthday song three times (geez).

We got in for a party of 3 kids and 4 adults. Wait time was said to be 15 to 20 minutes, only to be told 40 minutes later that the only way we could be seated was at a high top table, and they don't have any high top high chairs. Not great when trying to feed a decent meal to three hungry kids.

I did a catering order in December for about 30 staff members, doctor and nurses included and it was AWFUL. The order was supposed to be ready at 11: 45am and didn't come out until almost 12: 30pm. Given that it was late, you'd think it was fresh? No. Less than a 10 min drive back to the clinic and the food was cold like they barely grilled the wraps and fries were cold and super soggy. They also put fresh lettuce over brown lettuce in our salads. It was SLIMEY. I contacted corporate and filed a complaint. I was told I'd be getting a call back from the franchise owner. NOTHING. ILL BE CONTACTED THE BBB. No company is above taking responsibility for not only awful service but POOR QUALITY FOOD. IT WAS LIKE A SLAP IN THE FACE WHEN THE OWNER DIDN'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE THE COMPLAINT. LIKE THEY WERE TOO GOOD.