A lot has been said about millennials killing mediocre restaurants like Applebee’s.

I am a millennial. I haven’t eaten at an Applebee’s since 2002.

My MIL loves Applebee’s. Here’s my most recent experience with them, on her behalf.

The website is atrocious. Pop-ups, intrusive ads (on their own page?), and fly-our menus.

Plus it doesn’t have their whole menu available to order. She can’t add extra dressing? Only one soup?

And the ordering process is clunky, full of sliding pages and add-on requests.

So… forget the website.

Let’s order by phone!

Called, listened to a rather lengthy intro message, listened to it ring five or six times, and then!

“Our phones are busy. Please try later.”

And then it hangs up on me.

*deep breath*

Try again.
(She really loves Applebee’s and we really love her, so we persevere.)

They take our order. They cannot give us a total. Please just pay when you get here, good luck guessing your total.

I arrive.

There is no instruction aside from “car side to-go parking here ten minute limit”.

I sit for a few minutes. There is no sign of any employee, so I decide to call.

(See my previous tweet about the phones)

Their system apparently is this:
- look out the door occasionally and see if cars are there
- walk out to the car
- ask who the order is for
- go back inside, get the food
- come out, hand over food
- take the card inside, process payment
- bring receipt out, get signature…

- go back inside, print guest receipt
- bring back card and receipt

THE SYSTEM DOESNT FIT IN A TWEET.

THAT IS A BAD SYSTEM FOR CURBSIDE PICKUP.

Keep in mind that every other business in America has online check-in, pay-from-the-app, QR codes, etc.

Everyone else has figured out the curbside pickup in the last few weeks and Applebee’s has been doing this for YEARS and still doesn’t have it figured out.

So maybe millennials aren’t killing mediocre restaurants.

Maybe they’re killing themselves by being terrible.