Painful experience. If you're looking for a review of the food, do not read on. We never actually received food after waiting in line for 30 min. The line wasn't that long, roughly 10 people in front of us.
However if you would like to hear about my assumptions on why this place doesn't work efficiently, read on.
First off I love philly cheesesteaks, pretty much in any variety. So it's fairly easy to make me happy in this capacity. However if I wait in line for 30 minutes (not an exaggeration, because my wife was insistent we not visit this restaurant again, it does take a little more time than other places, clocked from 3:07 - 3:37 by the time I gave up) and still don't get to eat, in a mall food court of all things, then I would say this place has some serious work to do. I don't like to judge on the first time anywhere, I usually give places a 2nd and 3rd try. This is my 3rd try with this place.
Coming from over a decade in a variety of food service venues (Arby's, Pizza delivery, casual dining, bartending, Fine dining, etc) I have some idea of how a good restaurant runs and what a poorly run one looks like. I've worked at both.
1. It's blatantly clear the staff are not trained well and not managed well. I watched no less than 3 people come from the front and visit the back performing no work involved with making food for the line of roughly 20-25 people. These other employees were, I assume, either on break, taking inventory, or avoiding work altogether. This creates a huge amount of problems because this type of restaurant should have no less than 4 people working the front at all times, due to the nature of philly cheesesteak creation. One person to take orders, another to work fryers and make drinks, another to work the grilltop, another to complete orders (fill sandwiches, cut bread, add condiments, etc). To have 1 person work the grilltop, cut bread, add mayo, lettuce, pickles, run to the back to get more mayo, or to-go boxes, and also be the only person to perform managerial tasks (such as the refund I asked for after not seeing our food started after 35 minutes) on the cash register while the other two employees stood there watching, and the other 3 employees come out from the back, do nothing, then return to the back, is the most god-awful, depressing, soul-sucking, morale-crushing way to run a restaurant that only operates well slathered in efficiency. If the staff had a good attitude when they started, the way this place is setup smashed their morale to dust, probably in a week. This is the crux of most of my problem with this place. What we experienced is simply poor planning and execution. If there are literally thousands of hungry people walking in front of this place throughout a week and you can't serve 25 of them within an hour, close your business for a month, retrain everyone and start over.
2. The systems this restaurant has are painfully inefficient. Let's take for example To-Go Versus Eat here: After I ordered and said "For here." the woman at the register attempts to hand me a dirty tray that is covered in old straws and ketchup. I pass on the tray and will take my chances with my hands and forearms. The front line is clearly dirty. There is hardened cheese crusting the dispenser for the fries. I can see plenty of some type of red and blue goo spilling over top of a container (for special lemonades I presume). The glass in front of the grill top is no longer clear in any way. In short, it needs desperate cleaning. I had a gross illustration about how dirty it is, but I'm sure you get it.
Make a philly at home or order it in a real restaurant. Until this place does a total overhaul, I'll be stuck with Chic-Fil-A at the Columbiana Mall.
Funny (sad) side note: While I was waiting for my refund, my wife left the line to get us lunch at Chic-Fil-A. I kid you not, we had our food from Chic-Fil-A before the refund at Charley's was complete. Meanwhile, everyone who still had a glimmer of hope of getting a philly at Charley's glared at me because the same person running the grilltop, had to issue my refund, which stopped the entire operation for no less than 6 minutes. Full stop. read more