The Back Alley Archives

Ate at a PDQ the other day. Pretty good sandwich, on par with Chick-Fil-A, but the pickles are better. More expensive, too, but they give you a shitload of fries.

Tim Tebow has invested in several PDQ franchises.

So I pose the question: which fast-food joint should be considered "God's Restaurant"? I thought Chick-Fil-A had it well in hand with the whole anti-gay thing, but now that Tebow's involved with PDQ I have to rethink it.

I've been a longtime Chik-Fil-A fan, but ate at PDQ recently on a friend's recommendation. I had the Buffalo Chicken Tenders sandwich with fries and a drink and holy shit, was it ever good! I want to try their tenders with the Sweet Heat sauce next time I go.

Not everyone may be familiar with PDQ as they haven't been around very long. I had to go back and confirm it, but they've only been around less than two years. They opened their first store in Tampa in 2011 and they've grown pretty fast since then. They don't advertise much, but they promote themselves well. In addition to getting Tebow to buy a franchise, a couple of players for the Tampa Bay Rays, David Price and Wil Myers, are fans of their food and have posted about them on twitter. PDQ responded by coming in and catering a lunch for the whole team recently, so a bunch of other players posted about them as well.

I went back to the WPB location today. The parking lot is not very well-situated and the drive-thru lane was so congested that it ended up obstructing traffic on Okeechobee (if you don't know WPB, this is very close to the exit from I-95 and Okeechobee is a large and busy road).

So I parked and went inside. It was packed -nary an empty table to be found - but very few people were waiting to order.

I congratulated myself on my wisdom in skipping the drive-thru, placed my order and then went to get a drink at the Coke Freestyle (TM) machine. Mmmm.... vanilla cherry coke.....

And then I waited. And waited. Okay, they're busy, the person in front of me hasn't gotten her order yet.... and then she did. Hooray, I'm up next! No, I'm not. Several people behind me picked up their orders. Finally realizing that my order had gotten misplaced somehow I approached the guy who announces when your order is ready. I told him my name and he went to check on the status of my order, but he apparently couldn't find it because he asked me what it was. I showed him my receipt and he told me it'd be up in a couple of minutes.

And it was. And the order-announcing guy also apologized and, without being solicited, gave me a coupon for a free meal (up to $7.49 value).

That's a pretty good consolation prize for being made to wait 10 minutes. Whoever's running the show at that particular location knows the value of customer goodwill. Being a new chain, it's important that they retain customers who get poor service. I was honestly going to take them off my mental list of dining options until he handed me that coupon. Now I am pretty sure I'll be back, and soon.

So -1 for losing my order, +1 for making it right via a free meal.

Did PDQ for lunch today. Four tender meal with the Sweet Heat sauce. They give you so much food. It was great stuff. Going inside instead of going through the drive thru is definitely a good choice, because of both the Coke machines and the face that you can get malt vinegar for your fries.