Study: These Are the Slowest Restaurants in America

Picture this: You’re sitting at a restaurant 30 minutes after ordering food. It’s still not here. As your stomach growls, you look around the room at all the other people who got their food, laughing and carrying on, enjoying one delicious bite after the next.

What do you do?

1. Go to the bathroom and see if your food magically arrives before you get back.
2. Play Solitaire online or mahjong, to take your mind off the wait.
3. Snap your fingers at the waiter to ask them for an update.

Folks, it’s never C). That’s all we know for sure.

Well, that and we know which cities and states have the slowest restaurants in America because we recently analyzed Google reviews for more than 22,000 restaurants in 500 cities, looking for keywords and phrases that indicate frustration with slow service.

No regional trends to speak of on that map, right? Moving right along.

As it turns out, some restaurant brands get more complaints than others. You might even say they're developing a bit of a reputation.

We compared data across several dozen national non–fast food chains, to see which are most commonly griped about online. Curiously, IHOP earns the dubious honor of having the slowest service in America. Apparently short names don’t equal short wait times.

Where Restaurants Have the Slowest Service in the U.S.

We’ve all experienced it at one point or another—you’re out at a restaurant for dinner, and every other table seems to be getting their food before you. You can feel your stomach growling and keep hoping the next tray leaving the kitchen will have your meal on it. While eating out can be a treat of sorts, it can sometimes feel like a trick as you start to wonder if your waiter has forgotten about you or if the kitchen is just backed up.

Slow service at a restaurant can not only leave a bad impression on a current customer, but it can also impact future business as negative reviews are left online. We know at Solitaired that waiting around is never fun, even if you have a good game of Golf Solitaire going on your phone. In the end, we just want our food.

So with this in mind, we set out to learn where across the U.S. Americans are experiencing slow restaurant service the most. To do this, we collected more than 22,000 reviews from restaurants in the top 10 most populous cities in each state. We then analyzed reviews for mentions of 20+ keywords associated with waiting and slow service. Using this, we calculated the percentage of bad experiences with slow service and ranked both states and cities for the slowest service on average across all restaurants viewed.

Leading the way by state is Georgia—nearly 1 in 2 people going out to eat experience slow service. This is followed by both Carolinas with North Carolina claiming second place and South Carolina ranking third for slow service.

While it’s easy to forget the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as time goes on, an impact is still being felt, especially in the food and beverage industry. One last result of the impact has been difficulty with staffing. Though it can be difficult to identify at times, a short-staffed restaurant can experience slow downs, especially behind the scenes.

So while it may appear that nothing is wrong, aside from your food taking a lengthy time to be delivered, keep in mind that the slow service may be out of your server’s control. Another aspect to keep in mind is the shift in dining expectations. As delivery and fast-casual dining culture condition us to expect speed, it also causes waits to feel longer.

Even when faced with external sources like staffing, some states have managed to limit their guests’ wait times. Up first for the least slow services experienced by guests are restaurants in Alaska. Iowa is up next, followed by New Mexico in third place.

Cities with the Slowest Restaurant Service

In addition to ranking states, we also ranked cities across the country to gain a more zoomed-in view of restaurant service in America. With 53% of negative reviews indicating a slow service, Newport News, VA, claims the top spot in the rankings.

Up next, 52% of restaurant-goers complain about slow service at establishments across Augusta, GA. It appears that though the South is known for its hospitality, many people have felt restaurants in this part of the country fail to extend the southern charm to their dinner service.

In fact, southern cities make up the top 15 cities for the slowest restaurant service with four being in North Carolina. Overall, 5 of the 10 most populous cities in the Tar Heel state are included in the top 50 cities with the slowest service.

While North Carolina’s state capital ranked 32nd for slow restaurant service, we found state capitals ranking as the worst city in the state for slow service, including states like Alabama, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia.

The Restaurants That Keep Us Waiting Most Often

Sometimes you expect more from certain restaurants. Perhaps that mom and pop–owned diner down the road is close to your heart because you know the owners and understand that some days are busier than others. We don’t often find ourselves extending this same sentiment to large chains we visit, however.

Up first as the slowest restaurant chain is IHOP. Bacon and eggs don’t take that long to cook after all, right? Well that’s easy to say while cooking them at home, but in a full dining room during the breakfast rush of a Sunday morning, you’d be surprised just how long it can actually take.

Similarly, some food simply takes longer to cook, like a well done steak. This may be part of the reason for our second place chain, Texas Roadhouse, landing high on our slow service. This is followed by Buffalo Wild Wings, Cracker Barrel, and First Watch in third, fourth, and fifth place, respectively.

In addition to our chain ranking, we also grouped restaurants by cuisine to learn which types of foods we wait on the most on average. Leading the way are American restaurants. From fried chicken and BBQ to burgers and hot dogs, these restaurants offer a wide variety of food. Perhaps these lengthy menus play a role in the lengthy wait times. Rounding out the top three are breakfast restaurants and steakhouses.

Play a Game of Solitaire While Waiting for Your Food

Whether you are a frequent flyer at restaurants in your city or you typically opt for delivery, we encourage you to stay patient when eating out. Although waiting around for a drink refill or another basket of bread can be irritating at times, it is important to remain kind toward service workers.

With that being said, we at Solitaired understand your frustration and we have all found ourselves wishing a quick trip to the bathroom would magically make our food appear at the table, but sometimes we just have to wait.

Next time you find yourself faced with a lengthy wait at a restaurant, try challenging yourself to an online game. From Pyramid Solitaire to Tri Peaks, we have a wide variety of games that are sure to keep you entertained until your food hits the table.

Methodology

In this study, we set out to learn where the slowest restaurant service is in America. To do this, we collected Google reviews from more than 22,700 restaurants across 496 cities. We began by building a list of cities, pulling the top 10 most populous by state. We then collected data from 50 restaurants, where applicable, and all restaurants in cities with fewer than 50. We then built a list of 20+ keywords related to slow service and scraped reviews with 3 or fewer stars for mentions.

Next, we divided the total number of keyword mentions by the number of reviews with 3 or fewer stars to find the percentage of experiences with slow service to create an overall ranking. We followed those same steps by taking the average keyword mentions by city and state divided by the average number of reviews with 3 or fewer stars to determine the rankings for slow restaurant service by city and state.

Finally, we filtered restaurants by slow service percentage and analyzed the top 1,000 (excluding those with less than 100 total reviews). We first looked at the restaurant tags to determine cuisine type and took count of which cuisines appeared most among the top 1,000 restaurants and ranked them accordingly. We then analyzed restaurants by name to find which chains appeared most often as well.

Due to limited restaurant data, four cities were removed from this study including, Wasilla, AK, Tanaina, AK, Fairbanks, AK, and Essex, VT.