White Castle

L. Davis
1153 S. Emerald # 3
Chicago, Illinois 6028

January 29, 2020

To Whom It May Concern,
This letter serves as an official complaint. I frequently visit the White Castles located at 11050 S. Halsted Chicago, Illinois 60628 and have found the time spent in the drive thru to be quite excessive and they do not have smoothies in the morning.
I am sure there are some challenges with balancing sales and labor as I worked in restaurant management for a popular fast food chain myself. It may explain why there are times I have waited in the drive thru for over 16 minutes behind only two cars. While I often murmur to myself, I do believe it is time to bring to the attention of the corporate office because this is completely unacceptable.
There are factors that impact customer wait times such as a skeletal crew due to low sales combined with call offs, turn-over, lack of cross training across grill/front line. However, I do not believe these are the only factors affecting the excessive wait times I continue to experience at this White Castles. I believe some of it is apathy associated with serving customers in areas of high poverty. There are some notable challenges and unfortunately, every customer is impacted. All employees need to understand that its "fast-food" and to re assume a sense of urgency. Restaurant managers need support to make schedules reflective of sales and labor targets as well as understanding there are other targets equally important such as customer service since when customer service is up, sales go up. I drive out of my way to 127th & Western because it takes too long to get food from this particular restaurant. There is no sense of urgency among the staff at the Halsted location.
To add, after I have waited a long time in the drive through, they do not serve smoothies in the morning. When I ask why they do not have smoothies, they have different excuses each time. I believe they do not offer smoothies because they are "problematic" to make. With already long wait times, the staff may reason that they do not want to do anything that causes even longer wait times realizing that they get complaints often. Another reason may be that they do not have time to take out the items needed since employees are handling multiple tasks trying to do the work of two people due to a skeletal schedule.
Please consider sharing this information with the team there. Not in the spirit of something went wrong, but to help them understand it takes a balance. My neighbors and I deserve a nice White Castles! It is not fair for customers to wait so long for food and not be able to order items off the menu that some deem as too problematic to make. I welcome your feedback.

Sincerely,

L. Davis
Enc