Great American Restaurants Reviews

The decision to create GreatAmericanRestaurants is an example of 1. Business leadership being tired of having to pay the surcharge to an intermediary company, thought it would be fun to build their own app from the ground up, or both. The problem is that you don’t start a restaurant company to design apps. GreatAmericanRestaurants is a significant step back from those they had used previously with Best Buns, specifically Chow Now. It is cumbersome, it’s visuals are gaudy and poorly constructed, there are no API plug ins that allow it to integrate with Apple Pay or other payment exchange apps, nor does it slow you to use any of your external accounts (Apple, Facebook, Google) to create a profile, unlike the predecessor used. GreatAmericanRestaurants was likely a “great idea fairy” by company leadership who wanted the few extra cents or surcharge, but then gave zero funding to the actual design and development of GreatAmericanRestaurants and wondered why it’s an abject failure. You don’t build a restaurant business to design apps. So better off for your image to use a third party. In my opinion I give credit to the company and design team who had to build GreatAmericanRestaurants with basic requirements and little in funding, but the leadership who thought this was a great idea need for either be demoted or fired, so the technical IT team can get back to structuring your external interfaces for the betterment of the customer experience.

Went to our favorite GAR (Carlisle) for our 52nd anniversary. Got there early (5:30pm) and was seated at a table in a draft by the door to the outside seating. Took forever to get drinks, bread came cold and hard (we were told it was probably left over from earlier in the day), then food arrived cold (chicken and shrimp n grits), so not supposed to be cold! Ordered dessert and our delightful server came back to tell us they were out of the waffle. Deal with it! Okay! Order apple pie and ice cream. Well, apple pie was all pastry, couldn’t find any apple in there! Asked the server for chocolate sauce, which he provided warm. That almost saved the day! If the restaurant had been busy I might have given them a pass in some of the issues, but it was less than a quarter filled. No reason for all these negatives! Carlisle management, get your act together or we’ll go elsewhere!

March 2022 update:

Placed an order today. Had to put in credit card info because there is no support for Apple Pay but GreatAmericanRestaurants does not leverage any of the built in capabilities of iOS to auto fill fields. Not often I run across an app or web site that can’t use auto fill.

Please hire a good iOS developer and update GreatAmericanRestaurants to modern standards. I’ve been told the to-go orders in many of the restaurants are doing great. Please give to-go customers the same great customer experience and attention to detail we get in store. GreatAmericanRestaurants does not reflect the same care.

Jan 2022
It get’s the basic task done but given the focus on to-go business for GAR GreatAmericanRestaurants should be much better. No support for Login with Apple No support for Apple Pay I had to reset my login as the new app did not recognize my old login but why not go all the way and add support for the most common identify providers like Apple and Google? In 2022 I should not have to create a new login to use an app and should not have to put credit card information into an app. I use too many other apps that support these features. At the beginning of the pandemic I could excuse a lack of those features but two years these should be standard features.

The old app worked just fine. It was simple and for the most part had few issues. They upgraded the new App which erased all your old information. The worst part is the special request field is only 20 characters! Give me a break that’s 2 to 3 words. You must increase the size of this field! The old app’s field wasn’t a whole lot bigger but you could at least get more than 20 characters.
I also didn’t see any way to order more than one of a particular item. I didn’t see any + or quantity field - either in the item selection or once it was in my cart. The only option seemed to be to add the entire item a second time- including any special request notes you might’ve squeezed into the tiny 20 character field. Bad design. Being able to increase/decrease the quantity of an item it’s a basic ordering feature.

I previously ordered regularly from Best Buns via the DoorDash app. The fees were high but my DoorDash subscription helped reduce that. I was excited when GreatAmericanRestaurants came out because I wanted to support the restaurant and I have an issue with how much DoorDash charges restaurants on top of service fees to the customer and the underpaying of drivers. Unfortunately, the GAR app is just a restaurant front end being powered with DoorDash. You lose the convenience of DoorDash, money is still going to DoorDash and the kicker is if you pay for a DoorDash subscription, it’s not recognized so you are paying full freight on service fees and don’t have access to DoorDash support to resolve issues when they arise.

I order from Best Buns weekly and I am not liking the new app. Had to so in store last week because I could not find item I was looking for on app. Today, I wanted to use different payment method and was not able to add second card. Had to delete first card to add the card I wanted to use. Old app let you have more than one saved card on file.

The previous app was fine, easy to use, quick and simple. Out of the blue this version pops in and replaced the other and all of my info is gone. It gives the wrong times sometimes that Best Buns is open. It’s not user friendly, the UX is less than impressive. I deleted GreatAmericanRestaurants and now I just go inside to order, several people have told me while waiting in the restaurant that they deleted it as well. What a dang shame indeed.

Downloaded app, opened it to checkout out the new, wonderful features and found that I was not signed in. So, put in username/pw and error. Thought I mistyped pw so retyped it. Same error msg. Asked for permission reset. Email arrived saying I don’t have an account. Looked at my account via old app on iPhone and it shows my email as I typed it and my order history. Guess I’ll be ordering from iPhone vs iPad.

App, sign up, log in, and ordering delivery from Silverados seemed easy and straight forward. If you live close to a GAR, seems like a good app to have. Wish they could deliver their margaritas!

Two small suggestions: add a side of bread as a menu option that can be paid for via GreatAmericanRestaurants ; and enable adding a tip onto the order when using Apple Pay, even if the order is just curbside pickup. Thanks.

GreatAmericanRestaurants worked great initially, and I love having the convenience for my food to be delivered, but GreatAmericanRestaurants no longer recognizes valid payment cards. An error keeps popping that the “payment isn’t valid.” Or, I sometimes get an error stating that “Your order couldn’t be completed.”

The payment using gift card is beyond obnoxious. Brand new card with $50 balance is unrecognized. How am I supposed to use it now?

Also, the default tip setting is way to generous for a take-out order. It would be cheaper using third-party apps.

I love getting carry out from GAR, I order everywhere. It remembers what I like and asks if I’d like to order again. For a regular carry guest this is super helpful!

GreatAmericanRestaurants used to work just fine and then it got updated a couple months ago and now it’s impossible to order anything from the bakery. Perhaps the update was focused on the restaurants and the bakeries paid the price.

GreatAmericanRestaurants makes online ordering a breeze. 10/10 recommend!!!!

GreatAmericanRestaurants currently only allows 20 characters (not words) for special instructions. This is remarkably insufficient. Please increase the character limit in the next update, and I can improve my review. Thanks

I used to be able to sign in through my gmail email and the updated app won’t let me. It doesn’t show my order history. I wish I could go back to the previous version

App is unusable, there is an internal error loading the form to add a credit card. Used to order online from this place a few times a week. Looks like they just lost a good customer. Steer clear of GreatAmericanRestaurants.

Very easy to use and food always comes the way I like it!!

Can’t get app to work and they stopped taking orders over phone. Poor customer service. Update: app doesn’t work if you’re using a VPN.

The is no option to go back and edit once you have put things in your cart, and you can’t delete one single item from your cart either; you would have to start the entire order all over again if you want to make any sort of edits. One more thing, the CC scanner doesn’t work either. It is only the first week this is out so it’s bound to have some issues. Hope it gets better soon!

First, let me say that I love the GAR chain of restaurants and have always had great food and service at their restaurants!

However, the white label “ChowNow” app is difficult to use. The login process does not support Sign In with Apple and even when you sign up for a ChowNow account the form isn’t set up with auto-complete identifiers so you have to manually enter your account information. GreatAmericanRestaurants also won’t allow iOS to remember your login credentials.

GreatAmericanRestaurants does not feel like a native iOS app and behaves more like a responsive website.

It would also be helpful if GreatAmericanRestaurants provided a quick link to call the restaurant that you’re ordering from.

Finally, it would be nice if GreatAmericanRestaurants provided more payment options (Apple Pay, PayPal, etc.).

Love the idea but not all of the restaurants are listed. Just tried to place in order for Patsy’s and only Best Buns and Coastal come up for Tysons. Also looked and didn’t see Sweetwater location. Will keep for now to see if it gets updated

Wish they would just let you order as a guest instead of needing to create a full blown account. Big bummer. Deleted app after ordering.

Easy to place carry out orders at our favorite restaurants!