If there was ever a better time to join El Pollo Loco Rewards, now was the time!…read more
Well, I actually joined about a month ago when I attended a street food festival in Long Beach, where El Pollo Loco was a participating vendor. I hadn't had El Pollo Loco in years, and that foodie festival got me back into the chicken craze that was El Pollo Loco.
As a new member of their rewards program, I was given a welcome offer of $5 off a $10+ purchase. It was set to expire on Labor Day weekend when El Pollo Loco was offering a deal exclusive to rewards members: $1 Large BBQ Black Beans. Normally, they are $7.49, at least at this location, so to get them for $1 is an absolute steal of a deal!
Oh, but it gets even better! Rewards members could get two for that price!
And that's not it! One other member exclusive is a $7.99 meal deal where you can get a Classic Chicken Burrito, Chicken Taco Al Carbon, churro, tortilla chips, and a regular drink for that price. You could also upgrade your drink to a large for 30 cents more.
And if you see how the math adds up, you can pretty much guess how I made my order just over $10 before tax.
This El Pollo Loco is located in Carmel Mountain Ranch Town Center on Carmel Mountain Road between Highland Ranch and Stoney Peak. It's the same plaza with Ralphs and Trader Joe's as the anchor stores, though El Pollo Loco is a standalone building adjacent to the main road.
The El Pollo Loco locations close to me utilize kiosks, so imagine the surprise on my face when I saw that there were no kiosks inside! I did see tablets at the register, and I thought those were mini kiosks until Delia, the general manager, mentioned there are no kiosks at this location.
That turned out to be a huge damper for me because I was planning to order the members exclusives, but Delia mentioned I had to order online. If I had known that they didn't have kiosks inside, I surely would have placed my order in my car first!
But no biggie, since there weren't any customers inside, I simply took a seat at a table and placed my order. Actually, I had trouble adding the $1 Large BBQ Black Beans to my cart; whenever I tried to add 2 orders, the app kept telling me to choose a quantity between 1 and 2! I almost thought that meant they ran out of BBQ Black Beans, but when I asked Delia at the front, she said they still had those beans and didn't know why my app was acting up. I went back to take a seat and realized that I had already added two of the $1 Large BBQ Black Beans in my cart earlier that day when I was browsing the menu.
Delia did follow up with me to let me know she was able to order it on her end, and then I let her know my mistake. To think, all this pandemonium happened only because they didn't have an order kiosk inside!
Anyways, I placed my order, adding the $5 off $10+ purchase reward to my order, and submitted my order before I waited.
And waited.
And..."sir, your order is ready!" Delia didn't even have to say my name even though there was one other customer who had stepped inside to place his order. She did ask me if I'd like salsa to go with my order, which puzzled me because in my online order, I did specifically request two cups of Avocado Salsa to go with my order. This isn't the first time I've had this happen, so I guess this is a normalcy at El Pollo Loco to be asked which salsa you'd like even though there should have been a line item for that.
But I was seriously impressed with how quick they were! After only 4 minutes, my order was ready just like that! The app was estimating a 12-minute wait for my food, so to have it all done in 1/3 of that time is quite impressive!
However, with how quickly I got my order, I do question how freshly prepared the burrito, taco, and beans were. Well, maybe not the beans since they are slow-cooked, but how they prepared a taco *and* a burrito that quickly is beyond me, especially since I would normally wait that long for just one BRC Burrito.
The large drink was also ready for me; I was almost prepared to fill up the cup at the nearby drink dispenser, but no need. Everything, except for the fountain drink, fit inside a standard takeout bag easily.
The Classic Chicken Burrito, which should have been a step up from the BRC burrito, honestly wasn't that much better, and this goes back to how I question how fresh my order really was since I had gotten it so quickly. The overall flavor was lacking, even when I added some avocado salsa to the burrito.
For the drink, I got the Minute Maid Strawberry Hibiscus Aguas Frescas. Unfortunately, there wasn't much flavor in the drink that I wish I had gotten the tried and true Pepsi Zero Sugar instead. They also have Mango Lime Aguas Frescas, but I can't be certain I'd like that better.
As great of a deal this meal was, the same could not be said about the meal itself. 5 stars out of 10, but I'll round up here since I really liked the BBQ Black Beans so much that I ate an entire large side with no problem lol