Tossing Salt Review
Hardees, Laurinburg,NC
October 3, 2021
DougMaynard.com

Greetings my friends. Guess what we’re doing today. It’s a restaurant review of Hardees, located at 1675 S. Main Street, Laurinburg, NC. Yeah, I was hungry and against my better judgment, I decided to take a quick ride through the drive-thru. How did that work out? You’re about to find out.

As I said earlier, going to Hardees was against my better judgment. They’ve been open for not quite two years now and I went once with a friend not long after they first opened. The food was cold, greasy, the service was bad, and it was just a bad experience. But they were new and maybe some excuses can be made so I just shrugged it off, said never again, and forgot about it.

A few months ago, my brother and I went by there to get some food for him and his family. We went through the drive-thru and he had a pretty big order. The first words from the attendant’s mouth were “pull forward please” and then it was twenty-five minutes before they decided to come out with the order. My bro checked the order and the food was cold, the orders were wrong, things were missing, and every single way to mess up a food order, they had checked every single box. He went back inside and raised holy hell, got the order remade while he watched and waited, and ended up calling corporate and getting some free food as a result.

And now we come to tonight. Despite the earlier visits, I decided to give them one more chance. Okay, there were lines at McDonald’s and Burger King and I’m sick of chicken right now so that rules out KFC. So I pull into the drive-thru and go to place my order. One thing I’ve always liked about Hardees is the roast beef sandwich and so I look for a Roast Beef Combo on the menu. There isn’t one. The one thing I’m sure of and have enjoyed from Hardees for the past forty-years and it isn’t there anymore. So I ordered a Double Western Bacon Cheese Combo. It sounds safe and I’ve seen the commercials so I’ll give it a crack.

I pull up to the window and pay using my debit card. And the next words I hear are, “Can you pull forward please?”. There is no one behind me and it’s a simple order of a burger, fries, and a drink, so what the hell? But I do and move up a few feet.

And five minutes later, the guy from inside brings me my drink. He’s polite so no problems with the employee, but shouldn’t the drink have been given to me, the customer, before asking me to pull forward? And eight more minutes later, the same guy comes out and brings me a bag and hands it to me. I glance inside and see fries and a burger. No napkins of course, but that would make sense. I just say thank you and take off, starting the ride home.

I decide that I’ll munch on a few of the fries on the way home and reach into the bag. Not hot and not even warm, but cold. Greasy and cold. I took a bite of one fry and almost gagged.

And then we get to the house, less than a four-minute ride, and i pour the cold fries on a paper plate. Maybe I can save them with ketchup. And I open the burger. It actually has all the ingredients it’s supposed to, but it’s cold, the bun is hard, and obviously, it’s been sitting for a while. And the meat, the burger itself, is charred and burnt. It was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen or tasted. I managed to eat it since I was hungry, had to have food to take the medicine I needed to take, and buried it with ketchup, but even that barely made it tolerable. I can’t believe I paid $7.36 for that nasty garbage, but rest assured, I will NEVER do it again.

This restaurant has a reputation for being very slow and poor service, but the food, at least the breakfast stuff, is always good. But this is just beyond ridiculous and how this place manages to stay in business with food and service like this, I just don’t understand. I glanced at the Health Certificate and noticed that they rated a 94-something for sanitation and cleanliness and I can definitely believe it. They either need to do better or close that damn place down.

So for a rating on a scale of 1-10, I’ll give it a three. The drink was okay, but then again, it’s hard to mess up coke and ice. I’m sure they could do it though. I will not be going there again for anything and I would not suggest or recommend it to anyone I actually have respect for. It is that damn bad!

Questions, thoughts, and any comments give me a shout here or at my e-mail of Doug28352@yahoo.com. Have you had any bad experiences at the Hardees? Let me know. My thanks for reading. I’ll see you on the flip side, but not at the Hardees. Take care.

Ubuntu!