Our first Jimmy John's experience will also be our last. We actually were from out of town, but we'd been talking about trying Jimmy John's where we live, so we went while in Florence.
We arrived at 3 p.m., were not offered the $1 (8-inch) sub which was from 11-3, and we were reluctant to ask for it then, so we paid full price for two 8-inch subs which should have been $1 each.
When we walked in, there was a herd of staff standing in front of the counter, and to be fair, at least two greeted us (see later remarks about staff attention to us.) There may have been two other customers at that point, not more.
I was not asked what kind of bread I wanted (I wanted anything that was not white bread.) By the time I asked, they already had the sandwich underway, so I got white.
First, we did not see the cups (they were right there by the register where we ordered, but we were looking up at the menu and then at the person taking our order, then moved on so we didn't see them and had to ask for cups. Many restaurants will hand you a cup even though they are right there. But JJ's apparently is a big believer in self-service as shown by the rest of our experience.
OK, our bad. But then we started looking for napkins. Nowhere to be seen! I found someone and asked and was told that we could just reach over the counter and get them -- but they are still not visible until you lean over the counter! Certainly they were never offered by the staff until we asked.
The place was SO noisy! Music very loud, reverberating off all the hard surfaces.
We sat down to eat -- the ONLY customers in the store.. While we were there, two more customers came in and got sandwiches to take out, but there were never any other seated customers. I counted NINE staff members, and there may have been more in the back. So they had time to pay attention to customers. But did they? Noooooo. We ate, got up and cleared our trash, walked right by the front counter where there were several employees standing, doing nothing but talking (to each other), and we walked out the door. Not one person spoke to us. No "Thank you!" "Come back to see us!" "Bye!" "Have a nice day!" NOTHING! Not long ago we were in Five Guys for burgers, and TWICE while we were there (about the same amount of time we spent in JJ), staff came to our table and asked how things we, if we needed anything, etc. And thanked us for coming! (And they hand you a cup, and napkins are easy to find!)
Oh, and one person was mopping the floor and mopped so close to me I had to lean over. Could he not have let the foot or so of floor around me go until we left?
The food: the white bread (they call it "French" but it is FAR from French bread), is so thick and dense, and the turkey and cheese I got were so thin, that I felt like I was eating only bread most of the time. Not even delicious bread, BTW but tasteless! Oh, and the cheese? I was asked at the counter if I wanted cheese -- no mention that it cost extra, and I didn't see any mention on the menu board either. Fifty cents for a paper-thin slice of cheese that I thought they'd forgotten because I couldn't taste it and had to hunt to see it! And my husband had such a heap of shredded lettuce o his sandwich that he had to rake it off. He said after that, that his sandwich tasted pretty good.
I would say the ingredients of my sandwich wouldn't cost 50 cents at a retail store, so the markup would be over 1,000%. I guess they have to pay all those employees something for standing around socializing.
My husband said, "Well, we 've gotten Jimmy John's out of our system." I agree. We won't be back. Not to that one, and not to the ones near where we live. read more
