8 Frequent Customer Complaints About Applebee's

Whether you live in a suburban area with few good independent sit-down restaurants or you're just looking for a reliable, relatively affordable date night meal, a chain restaurant like Applebee's can seem like a good option when you need a bite to eat (thanks to its entrees and various cocktails). Applebee's has been around since the 1980s, and in that time, it has served up classic American favorites to families across the country. But if you've eaten at the chain yourself, then you probably know that it doesn't always live up to its potential — an idea that many customers seem to agree with, according to plenty of comments scattered across the internet.

We're digging into some of the most common complaints about the chain, ranging from issues like value to cleanliness and beyond, to address what diners don't seem to particularly like about what Applebee's has to offer. Those who have experience at Applebee's may have encountered some of these same problems and be able to relate to these specific customer complaints. Perhaps you're looking for some solidarity after a particularly bad meal at the chain, or maybe you're trying to talk yourself out of spending money there for dinner tonight. Whatever the case may be, these customer complaints are common enough that they're impossible to ignore. If you still end up going to the chain anyway, just make sure you avoid these common mistakes to avoid a truly unpleasant dining experience.

Perhaps the most salient and relevant customer complaint about Applebee's is that the food and dining experience there doesn't offer a particularly good value for what you pay. Let's be real: Applebee's isn't exactly a fancy restaurant, so the price tag should reflect that reality. But Applebee's customers say that this isn't always the case. In a thread where a Reddit user asked why so many people hated the chain restaurant, one commenter said it wouldn't even be considered as bad as it is if the food was so overpriced. According to this Redditor, "There's room in this world for cheap, shi**y food. There's room for expensive, amazing food. But unless you're at a baseball game or something, there's no room for expensive, shi**y food." We couldn't agree more.

Other Redditors seem to agree. One said that the restaurant offers both poor quality and value. Another claimed that the quality of food you can get there is roughly equal to what you'd find at the frozen section of a grocery store but way more expensive than frozen food. Nobody wants to pay what they perceive as premium prices for subpar food, but all too often, it seems like that's what customers are getting at Applebee's. There are some menu items even the staff won't eat.

Nobody wants to spend time in a space that's dirty or unkempt, be it a friend's home or a clothing store. But when it comes to a place where you're buying and eating food, it feels even more important to prioritize cleanliness. Unfortunately, that's apparently not always the case at Applebee's. Many customers complain about the restaurant's lack of cleanliness, citing it as one of the reasons they're wary about the casual dining chain. One Redditor wrote that they'd never been in an Applebee's that felt particularly clean, indicating that this isn't a problem with one specific location — rather, it seems to be a feature of the chain as a whole.

Another claimed that the chain is "frequently dirty," and not just in a basic, crumbs-left-on-the-table way. Rather, they said that they had found a bloody paper towel in the bathroom and that the tables and menus at the location they'd visited had a strange aroma to them. And some customer complaints about cleanliness focused on specific locations. A visitor to one location in Leland, North Carolina, complained on Tripadvisor about how dirty the restaurant was, saying that there was urine on the toilet seats, the bathroom as a whole was very dirty, and a lack of cleanliness in the dining room. There was a similar Tripadvisor review for a location in Greenville, South Carolina, with the customer complaining that the ceiling and air vents were exceptionally dirty and that they even found something floating in their beer.

You're probably not planning a trip to Applebee's specifically to get healthy, diet-approved food. There are a few too many fried items on the menu for that, anyway. But that doesn't mean you want to eat a full day's calories for a single Applebee's meal. Unfortunately, though, that might be the case when you decide to eat at this restaurant — many customers claim that the food is way too high in calories to justify eating there on a semi-regular basis. 

Even when you think you're ordering something that's on the lighter end of the spectrum, that's not always the case. One Redditor said that their Applebee's salad contained 1,700 calories, which is a calorie count that's frankly hard to pull off in a salad. A similar comment complained about the calorie count of a specific salad on the menu. Another poster wondered if the calorie counts on the online menu were even accurate. It was hard for them to find anything that would fit into their meal plan.

Yet another Redditor complained on a different thread that "95% of it is over 1,000 calories." While those exact numbers may not be totally accurate in every instance, they made their point — this is not a place where you can find very reasonable calorie counts. They even said they saw an appetizer (just an appetizer) that was over 2,000 calories.

If you want a quick and easy meal at home, it may seem reasonable to blast a frozen option in the microwave for a few minutes and accept that it might not have the ideal texture you'd get if you'd cooked it more conventionally. But when you go out to a restaurant and are paying restaurant prices, you probably want your food to be cooked fresh. It's a totally reasonable expectation. But, according to a Redditor who claims to have worked at Applebee's, some of the food there actually is microwaved, although some of it is apparently still made in-house.

Customers have noticed that the food can be less than fresh and complain about it on other Reddit threads. One diner described the food at Applebee's as "pre-packaged microwaved crap," which sounds like pretty harsh criticism but may not be totally inaccurate, depending on your point of view. Another cited the supposed prevalence of microwaved food as one reason people seem to hate Applebee's so much. Still another Redditor said the food isn't all that bad but still mentioned that it seems microwaved. Why pay a premium for food that doesn't actually taste very fresh or carefully prepared?

Salt is an incredibly important part of just about any savory dish ... and even some sweet ones, like salted peanut butter bars. But it's definitely possible to go way overboard with the salt, which, according to many Applebee's customers, happens far too often at the chain. Many people complain about just how salty the food is, indicating that it's a relatively widespread issue. A poster on Facebook specifically called out the French onion soup, saying that it was so salty that they couldn't even finish the dish. A Redditor described the food in general as "overly salted" and claimed that it's one of the reasons Applebee's tends to get so much hate.

Another Redditor said that when they ate at the chain, they got an impression that most of the food was very salty, even though they didn't technically know exactly how much salt was in the dishes. But another was more specific, calling out dishes at the chain for just how much sodium they contained. Ultimately, this poster said, "They may as well pour salt on your food." This doesn't exactly sound appetizing, even for those who like really salty food.

Many of the complaints listed here are pretty egregious, and it's understandable why people wouldn't want to eat at a restaurant that's straight up dirty or way too expensive. But for some people, Applebee's is worth complaining about simply because the food is boring. After all, this isn't exactly a place to visit when you want to try a new, interesting take on a dish — it offers pretty standard American chain restaurant food that you can find other versions of elsewhere. One Redditor admitted that the restaurant does have mass appeal, but that's because the food is "boring" and "safe." Admittedly, that could be a selling point for some people, like families with picky kids. But it's not anything to get particularly excited about.

A Reddit user on a different thread described the food at Applebee's as "boring" and "generic," which seems to be a pretty common sentiment amongst online commenters. Still another Reddit poster described the food as "interchangeable" with other, similar restaurants, once again echoing the sentiment that the menu is ultimately just boring. Reliable? Maybe. But still boring.

There are times when you may not be looking for the most ground-breakingly delicious cuisine or interesting dishes out there — just something that's moderately tasty that appeals to a wide range of palates. This is when chain restaurants can really shine. But is Applebee's the best option when there are so many other solid chains? Maybe not. One Redditor said that there are better chain options out there. They specifically point out Red Robin for burgers and Texas Roadhouse for steak.

In another Redditor thread, an original poster asks what people's favorite chain restaurants are. A commenter said that the only chain they never really find anything satisfying to eat is Applebee's, while highlighting other similar chains, like Texas Roadhouse and TGI Friday's instead. Another commenter said that Chili's was significantly better than Applebee's (even though there are some things that Applebee's does better than Chili's). Elsewhere on Reddit, a commenter said that there are so many better restaurants out there. If you're including local restaurants too, there's almost always something better to choose from.

You're not alone if you remembered Applebee's as a pretty solid restaurant only to visit in recent years and realize that it's actually not that good after all. Other customers online have echoed similar sentiments. One even said that back in the day (back in the late '90s and early 2000s), Applebee's was the place to go for families. It was affordable enough and offered decent quality food that actually tasted good. But now, they said, they consider it a "last resort" restaurant. They pondered whether the restaurant itself had changed or their taste had just evolved in that time. The overwhelming response from commenters was that Applebee's and others like it actually had gotten worse over time. A different Redditor agreed that the chain used to have good food in the 2000s, but that it had gotten worse since then.

Another Reddit user posted a picture of some food they'd gotten from Applebee's that, frankly, doesn't look that appetizing. They mentioned wanting to try the restaurant one last time to see if it actually delivered, but said that the food there has gotten worse. And a Facebook user who used to work at Applebee's says that when they drive past their old Applebee's store, it looks a lot emptier than it once did, indicating that it might have dropped in popularity over the years.