My wife and I have been habiting Cousins Sub franchises since the 70's. The great majority oft store experiences offer little to write about in a good sense, our visit to the Cousins Subs Store #1148 in Grafton, WI on or around 2:20 pm on Sunday, 10-27-13 was not one of those experiences.
When we arrived at the store after 2:00 pm there two couples at tables eating their meals. We had one individual order in front of us. His order was memorable since he asked for a "hot" ham and cheese with some specifics on the vegetable contents. Since when did Cousins Subs become a Subway or a Quizno's? A "hot" ham and cheese? I was apalled. The only hot subs I've consumed at Cousins were subs that were served that way as a standard, i.e. cheese steak, pulled pork, meatball and cheese.
Regardless of the special order, the fellow got his two hot ham and cheese subs almost 15 minutes before we got our 3 ea. Half Ham & Provolone on Italian EZ Mayo and that's just the beginning of one of our worst store experiences ever.
While we waited the veritable eternity for our order - 2 half subs to be eaten in store and one wrapped, an array of other patrons entered the store and placed thier orders. Even after getting our subs some 20 minutes after ordering and spending another 15 minutes eating them, we may have heard one other order called to pick up.
Perhaps at this mid afternoon Sunday with no Packer game, the staff was a bit light for the moderate crowd, but the throughput time on order placement to order delivery was the worst I've every experienced in over 30 years of habiting the franchise.
To add insult to injury, the otherwise renowned baked on premise Cousins Sub Italian bread served in our subs was grossly over baked, dry and crumbled into pieces with every bite. The bread is usually the part of the sub where one will find the most variation from store to store - in spite of a rigid recipe and baking process. Some stores get it right consistently and others like the Grafton store missed hopelessly. If the crust is not crisp yet chewy, the store has missed the mark on the baking time, temp or simply bread freshness.
It irked my wife and I greatly to know that we passed perhaps 3 or 4 other Cousins Subs stores on our way from Milwaukee's north side to Grafton only to have one of the worst experiences ever at a Cousins Sub store.