Panda Express

[storewanderer]

Anyone tried to go to Panda Express lately? I assume this has been going on for a while...

This is in NV.

You literally cannot enter the restaurant. They have the front doors propped open and have moved the cash registers onto a table and there is a big plastic shower curtain draped down over the register table. You order this way, standing outside the whole time. Then order pick up is even more interesting. This particular location, has a "side door" and that side door is locked, but there are a few chairs sitting outside that front side door. You receive your order at that door as the employee leaves your order on a chair when it is done.

So this also means you cannot see anything that is going on inside the restaurant (like, are all the employees wearing masks, are they using gloves to handle food, are they all not coughing), thanks to tinted windows and not all of the lights turned on in the (unused) dining room area.

This is a joke. I can go to El Pollo Loco in Sparks or NW Reno and it almost is a normal operation at this point- every other table inside is marked cannot be used, salsa bar is closed, and you have to ask the employee for napkins/straws but beyond that and employees in masks you have a normal operation. There is still an El Pollo Loco in Carson City that is drive through only; also has most individual meals priced about $1 above the other locations; I expect that location to go under soon.

[Alpha8472]

If this is a corporate directive, then this is crazy. In the case that it is just this store, I tend to believe that it is just the manager of this store being too extreme.

Customers want to be confident about the safety of their food, but if the windows are blacked out then it seems like the employees are hiding something. Did an employee catch coronavirus, and the manager now wants to take no chances of having a customer spread it to employees again? Who knows.

Panda Express is now doing their own delivery. They no longer use DoorDash or any of those other delivery apps. They apparently were having problems with tampered food or the food taking way too long to get to customers. They now rely on Panda Express employees as drivers. This way they are cutting out the expensive delivery app companies which take a portion of the profits.

[SamSpade]

Before I left Oregon last week, this is exactly how Panda Express was operating, although without the shower curtain.

I am not sure how their locations in newly reopened malls are operating, though. (for example, Washington Square in Tigard, Ore. or Clackamas Town Center in Happy Valley, Ore.)

We do not have tinted windows up here (not as hot I guess) so you can fully see what is going on. I've also seen plenty of folks queued at local non-drive through locations so they don't seem to mind.