We scoured the globe (okay, just the continental United States) and ranked the absolute worst chain restaurants just for you.
You're welcome.
Texas Roadhouse
Believe it or not, 38% of the visitors that come into Texas Roadhouse go online to complain about one thing or another. The most general complaint is that the restaurant is far too loud for the standard family to enjoy their steaks and sauteed mushrooms in peace. Although it is a favorite for some, America seems to generally dislike the Texas Roadhouse overall.
Red Robin
Despite the bottomless fries and milkshakes, Red Robin’s customer satisfaction rating seems to be dropping at a consistent rate. In the past year, Red Robin lost 9% of its former 26% customer approval rating due to multiple complaints about noise and poor service. Although, according to consumers, the quality of their food has been consistently diminishing as well.
Joe’s Crab Shack
Joe just can’t catch a break nowadays! Mr. Joe and his Crab Shack have been complained about far too many times this year to be a restaurant that anyone should consider visiting. The largest complaints are about the price of the food, its mediocrity, and how poor and slow the service is. Do yourself a favor and check out a different crab shack the next time you’re craving seafood.
Red Lobster
Much like Joe’s Crab Shack, Red Lobster has been a consistently declining business due to the mediocrity and price of their food. It’s almost as if nowadays people have access to more information about local spots that have higher quality, better-priced food than chain restaurants. Rule of thumb, if you’re more than 100 miles from a coastline, don’t eat at a seafood restaurant.
Golden Corral
Golden Corral is the perfect example of “sometimes less is more.” This chain overloads their buffets with quantities of food significantly larger than the audiences that the chain brings in. Additionally, in order to make a profit off of their $10.99 buffet deal, Golden Corral has to keep its standards for quality of food pretty low.
Hardees
Not to be confused with its sister restaurant, Carl’s Junior, Hardees serves up some of the biggest (and nastiest) fast-food hamburgers that you can find on the market. Nothing screams “the American diet” louder than a ½ pound cheeseburger with a hot dog, potato chips, and bacon smashed in between it. Hardees should be your last resort for truck-stop eats, like please, go anywhere else.
Roy Rogers
This restaurant has been getting scathing reviews since its conception. Serving up gut-busting burgers and fries, all cooked in grease, with no vegetarian or vegan options to be found, this chain is doomed to fall apart sooner or later. Just take the example from Roy Rogers himself, he died from congestive heart failure caused by eating his own restaurant’s food.
P.F. Chang’s
This “Chinese” restaurant is probably the saddest excuse for chain Asian fare compared to every chain across America. Not only are these dishes not authentic in any way possible (most of the menu isn’t even related to American Chinese food), the menu is unbelievably unhealthy and unappetizing. The melon and cashew chicken alone has more than a week’s worth of the daily recommended sugar intake.
Beef ‘O’ Brady’s
Even though this chain desperately needs a name change, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s has been making a much-needed recovery from the nastiness it was previously known for. However, this restaurant is still close to the bottom of the chain-food food-chain. Beef ‘O’ Brady’s has built up a reputation of serving incredibly low-quality American-English pub fare, but recently they have updated their menu to be a bit more “gastro” than before. Hopefully, this will work out for them.
Applebee’s
Applebee’s has built a reputation of being the most polarizing chain restaurant out there. Some love it, some hate it, but it is impossible to ignore the inconsistencies in their menu decisions. Serving fajitas, stir fry, chicken parm, smoked BBQ ribs, and a kale and goat cheese salad in the same establishment sounds like a design choice by someone who has never stepped foot in a restaurant. Who knows, maybe a toddler built their menu.
Hard Rock Cafe
This spot always seemed like a mistake. The fact that anyone would go to a chain restaurant simply to be around replicas of important pieces of music history is a bit ludicrous, but somehow virtually everyone has been to a Hard Rock Cafe at least once in their lives. This restaurant is failing, probably because you can find all that information on the internet now, and you won’t have to spend $27 on a burger to do it.
Dave and Buster’s
Listen, buddy, nobody goes to Dave and Buster’s strictly to eat their food. They go for the beer towers, the cool jump-rope game, and the ever-increasing chance of making your coworkers feel uncomfortable during the “mandatory team-building outing” that your boss suggested. Push aside your tie, swallow your pride, and use some of those loaded nachos to offset all the miller lite you just chugged, even if they do taste pretty mediocre.
Pizza Hut
We’re talking about Pizza Hut takeaway and the Pizza Hut buffet here. If you thought custom-designed Pizza Hut pizzas were underwhelming, grabbing a slice that has been sitting under a heat lamp for three days and has undoubtedly been touched by every child in the restaurant might just dissuade you from eating at this chain altogether. Pizza Hut needs to catch up because they’ve fallen behind Domino’s entirely.
Waffle House
The food and the service at Waffle House is an acquired taste. However, if you can get past the possibility of contracting a foodborne illness, Waffle House might just be the nostalgic reminder of the interstates that you’ve driven on throughout your life. Waffle House is a coin toss, when its good, its really good, and when its bad, you’re going to regret getting out of bed that day.
Denny’s
Denny’s is trying to do too much for what they’ve got. An all-night breakfast diner doesn’t need to have a salmon salad or unseasoned broccoli and chicken “fajitas” on their menu whatsoever. That being said, if you’re on a budget and need something fast at 3 am, Denny’s might be the place for you.
Steak and Shake
Steak and Shake tries to masquerade as a “restaurant,” but we can see through the veil. This glorified “steakburger” restaurant just serves normal hamburgers, normal shakes, and it deserves the below-average praise that it receives. Even though a mint and Oreo milkshake might sound good right now, please resist the urge to hit the S&S drive-through.
Ruby Tuesday
This spot is like Applebee’s after dark. Drop the extremely family-friendly environment, and substitute a moderately family-friendly environment with a salad bar, that's Ruby Tuesday. The Ruby Tuesday menu is very similar to Applebee’s, in the sense that it really doesn’t know what kind of restaurant it is. You can get a burger, but instead of getting fries or a side salad, you can opt for pilaf and grilled zucchini, which is ultimately more healthy yet extremely boring.
California Pizza Kitchen
CPK has a strange history of being the most hit-or-miss chain restaurant out there. Although this brick oven pizza spot turns out some 6/10 pies consistently, everything else on the menu is a curveball. Pairing a Thai slaw salad with a BBQ chicken pizza and washing it down with a Bloody Mary might not seem like an ideal evening, but that’s the one you’re going to have if you waltz into CPK. Oh, their lunch deal is actually pretty decent, criticisms aside.
Friendly’s
There is barely anything friendly about this establishment at all. Nobody should feel welcomed by overpriced, low-quality ice cream and fried foods. The only redeeming thing Friendly’s has going for it is those cool hats the employees get to wear, if you ask nicely, they might give you one. Only one though.
Sizzler
Sizzler is one of those outlier restaurants that doesn’t really make sense on the wide scale of things. In theory, an all you can eat salad bar that serves good bread and proteins should work, but they decided to go the extra mile, to their detriment. Sizzler is not just a salad bar with fresh bread and proteins, they are also a full-service restaurant. It’s the full menu that kills them, not the other stuff. Drop the table service, keep the buffet, then you’ll be in good shape.
Smashburger
First off, this restaurant doesn’t actually serve smash burgers. They serve griddled flat patties that are not smashed on the griddle, they’re just small. Go figure. Additionally, their menu is far too unhealthy for the modern consumer, and until they decide to update their menu, they’re likely destined to stay at the bottom of the desirable fast-food list.
O’Charley’s
Just like everyone’s favorite bad restaurant, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s, O’Charley’s is taking massive steps to rebuild their restaurant to the modern palate. Changing their menu from “french fries and mozzarella sticks” to “California cobb salad and peach chutney chicken,” and changing their atmosphere from “dim lighting and big TVs” to “natural light and plants” has definitely done wonders for their business. Keep an eye out for the O’Charley’s glow up, it’s coming soon.
KFC
You might have seen this coming, but the colonel deserves a pretty serious drag for the quality of food he’s been serving. KFC was the king of fried chicken until other restaurants started serving better quality stuff, in response, KFC started serving weirder menu items, still with the lower quality meat. Instead of coming up with the Double Down, KFC should have doubled down on sourcing better ingredients.
Burger King
The King has been on the downswing for quite a few years now. However, with the introduction of the Impossible Whopper and the speculation of other meatless alternatives, they have a leg up on the obvious competition. The only problem, they cook their meatless burgers on the same surface as their meat burgers, defeating the purpose of having a “vegan/veg” option and opening themselves up to an onslaught of lawsuits.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s isn’t really a restaurant anymore, they’re an advertisement agency. McDonald's got caught up in capital over quality, and since then, their customer satisfaction has been plummeting at a rapid rate. Now that you have to pay for the McDonald’s brand as opposed to spending money directly on the ingredients, they’ve gotten comfortable being lazy with their food.
Baskin-Robins
No number of flavors (they have 31) could save this ice cream store from their doomed business model. Baskin Robbins just started opening stores in the US for the first time since 2006 after attempting to rebrand themselves to be a “boutique” style ice cream shop. Although this facade is pretty thinly veiled, they seem to be making a comeback, but that might not last much longer.
Bob Evans
Bob Evans is like if Golden Corral served dishes instead of having a buffet. This southern-American restaurant has been around since the early 1900s and hasn’t really been updated since. This business needs to get with the times because they are going down quickly.
Shoney’s
Shoney’s really only exists in the south, and in most cases, it’s pretty hidden from the non-trucker individual. However, if you grew up in the south, you likely have some warm memories of coming to this restaurant for breakfast on Sunday mornings. If you didn’t have that experience as a child, do yourself a favor and ignore Shoney’s at all costs. It’s like Denny’s but worse, just go to a local diner instead
Logan’s Roadhouse
This place wouldn’t be ranked so low if it weren’t so darn unhealthy. You, straight up, cannot order vegetables at this place without them being completely covered in cheese or served on top of a giant slab of buttery meat. Do yourself a favor and hit any other roadhouse, Logan’s is covered in grease.
Native Grill and Wings
Native Grill and Wings is less about the grill, more about the wings. To tell you the truth, this whole menu just feels slapped together, and all the food items are of similar quality. They even have an incredibly mediocre pizza menu, which are all baked in a convection oven and are par-cooked just like at Sbarro. Stay far away from this restaurant.
BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse
This restaurant has the potential to be one of the greats, only if it stops cutting corners and starts investing in good quality ingredients. The menu is there, the design is there, but much like most chain restaurants, the attention to detail is painted over when it comes to actually making good food. 2/10 stars, adjust your priorities or fade to obscurity.
Perkins
Perkins is like the worst of IHOP and Denny’s smashed together into a restaurant that has the strangest hours in American diner history. Perkins might be a lost cause at this point, due to its outdated menu, and the fact that it’s a carbon copy of other diner chains that are doing infinitely better than they are. Perkins might just want to call it quits now.
Chili’s
Listen, Chili’s is one of the final frontiers for chain dining. Chili’s is unafraid of its inauthenticities, which inevitably denotes its downfall. If you want a Corona-Rita and a plate of sizzling, underseasoned fajitas, you’re in the right place. However, claiming that it’s Mexican cuisine, or even true Tex-Mex for that matter, is ludicrous.
IHOP
The only day you should go to IHOP is the annual “Free Pancake Day” celebration that isn’t really advertised because IHOP is on the out business-wise. Unsurprisingly, the whole IHOB publicity stunt didn’t help the chain whatsoever, it actually hurt them in the long run. Their new idea demonstrated that their burgers are just as underwhelming as their pancakes, and that is where the true problem lies.
On the Border
On the Border is a slightly more authentic version of Chili’s, but just in their rice and beans. This spot serves up cheap margs and burritos that will bust your gut and not your wallet. This place is slowly failing though, simply due to higher budget chains picking up real estate in more opportune places.
Hooters
As social integrity and gender equality conversations become more prevalent, Hooters becomes more and more obsolete. Not only is their food pretty nasty, but the whole premise of the restaurant is misogynistic and destined for inevitable failure. Go get your beer tower somewhere else, the waitresses will likely thank you.
TGI Friday’s
Has anyone actually been to a TGI Friday’s in the past decade? If you can find one single person that’s eaten at this chain in their adult life, please direct them to the comment section as quickly as possible, we need a testimony. TGI Friday’s, if you’re really out there, please send some vouchers for free meals, only then will we be able to assess the reason you’re failing appropriately.
Buffalo Wild Wings
B-Dubbz has a reputation for being the frattiest, most craft beer-soaked, collared shirt wearing establishments out there. Don’t get it twisted, Buffalo Wild Wings can be a really good time, but only if you go with your friends that know the most about sports so they can explain to you why people are cheering and slamming their double IPA’s when the home team makes a touch-goal or whatever. Oh, and make sure you wear a hat, but backwards.
Johnny Rockets
You will undoubtedly rocket out of Johnny Rockets twice as fast as you came in. These fat soaked, cheese whizzy, calorie and sodium bombs they call “sandwiches” shouldn’t even be considered food at the end of the day. Although they are working on healthifying their menu, they still have a long way to travel before they reach their goal.
Macaroni Grill
This restaurant is best described as “if the CEO of Olive Garden ate at the Cheesecake Factory once and made a rash decision.” Although this restaurant tries to serve dishes with more obscure ingredients, like peppadew peppers and “brussels sprouts” (not even sure if that’s real), they still follow the same chain restaurant guidelines of packing everything with cheese, rendering it practically inedible. Instead of eating here and spending $24 on chicken parm, just make it at home, it’s really easy.
Outback Steakhouse
Outback has always been in the back of our heads, hearts, and digestive system. This meat-centric restaurant just hasn’t adjusted to the times yet, because when it was conceived, people actually thought that Australians ate blooming onions. Now everyone knows that Australians only eat oysters and drink espresso, both of which are not on the menu at Outback Steakhouse.
Famous Dave’s BBQ
Whoever decided to deem Dave as famous (most likely Dave himself) probably regrets that decision. The sauces here truly suck. The barbecue is a sorry excuse for smoked meat and its unclear whether this restaurant should even be considered a barbecue joint at all. Just go to Sonny’s instead.
Cheesecake Factory
The Cheesecake Factory very well could be the most extreme gastronomical experience that you can find in all 50 states in America. Considering that this place is practically a swimming pool full of butter, the fact that their menu is so enormous makes no sense. Go for the mac and cheeseburger, stay because you’re so full you’re afraid you’ll fall off of your high-top chair if you try to get up.
Fleming’s Steakhouse
Can you believe that a chain steakhouse that obviously flys in their ingredients weeks in advance and serves freezer-burned steak has the audacity to charge $60 for a ribeye? We can’t either. Yeah, you’re better off not eating here.
Olive Garden
The only thing you should go the OG for is their unlimited soup salad and breadsticks deal. Even though they’ve admittedly lost a ton of money over that promotion, those dishes are really the only digestible menu items they have. Everything else is practically chicken wrapped cheese covered in alfredo sauce. You’d be better off just eating a stick of butter at home.
Mellow Mushroom
This Grateful Dead (and some other illegal substance) themed restaurant naturally hasn’t been doing well. This might be surprising to 60-year-old men that named their children Casey and Althea but probably not to anyone else. Due to its psychedelic atmosphere, overpriced pies, strange creative decisions with their menu (most likely relating to the illegal substance they’ve decorated their restaurant around), and poor location scouting, this mushroom is going down to Terrapin Station and it's never coming back to town.
Coco’s Bakery and Restaurant
Coco’s had a great thing going when they first hit the scene, they were a Puerto Rican bakery with a restaurant attached, but after they became a chain, they just started catering to old people. Seriously, they actually have a 55+ menu that you can only access if you’re 55 years of age or older. This menu has pre-cut and easy-to-chew dishes that are enough to keep millennials far, far away from this place.
Carrabba’s Italian Grill
Everyone knows someone that worked at Carrabba’s, and they would most likely tell you that this place is not for the faint of heart if you ever wanted to be a server for a chain restaurant. Carrabba’s is less Italian, more grill, but mostly $12 glasses of cheapo wine that you can buy a bottle of for $7.50. Go to a different restaurant in a different strip mall.
Cafe Rio Mexican Grill
Cafe Rio is like if Chipotle and Qdoba decided to open a restaurant together but modeled themselves after Moes Southwestern Grill. Seriously, this menu is so uninspired you could come up with it while waiting in line. By the way, there’s always a line. For some reason, they don’t see the need to staff a second cashier in any of their locations, and for that, we cannot give you the thumbs up of approval.
Chi-Chi’s Mexican Restaurante
Have you ever seen a Chi-Chi’s commercial and were impressed by how good the food looked? Well, you should completely forget about that food and focus on the truth, the fact that their food is super nasty. The salsa is practically tomato soup, their tacos are under packed and dry, and just about everything else is equally as nasty, except for the beans. Somehow, the beans are the only redeeming factor of this dying restaurant.
Fashion Cafe
We are unsure if you’ve ever heard of this place, but the idea was propagated by some of the world’s top models. They had locations in the US, UK, South Africa, and Spain, but none of them stayed open. The high fashion icons that started this chain didn’t really stick to the high fashion model diet, serving up huge burgers and plates of pasta ended up being their downfall. Or was it just a terrible idea to begin with? Either way, they’re out of business now.
Bill Knapp’s
This chain officially shut down in 2002, but they still have a handful of operating restaurants that are owned by franchisees. It’s no wonder they shut down though, they cut corners with their food and they used emerging technological trends to pull them through the advertising boom in the 1990s. They couldn’t hang with modern chains, so they got the boot, just like some modern chains are receiving nowadays.
Sbarro
If you haven’t eaten a slice of Sbarro pizza, consider yourself lucky. Every poor fool that had to experience the pizza-hunger in a truck stop on an interstate in the middle of the night, hundreds of miles away from their destination deserves financial compensation from Sbarro. Seriously, this is the worst chain pizza place.
Domino’s Pizza
Dominos has changed the pizza world for the better, but they have not changed their own pizza in a better way to support themselves. As Domino’s expanded to become the most successful pizza delivery service on the planet, they focused more on the technology behind the pizza making, which changed the product in a way that isn’t bad, it just doesn’t embody the spirit of traditional pizza making. However, if you want a hot, fast, cheap, and decent quality pizza, Domino’s should be your go-to.
Bar Louie
Bar Louie has pretty decent quality food, a quaint gastro-pub environment, and a price range that’s both attractive and accessible. The only problem that they have is their marketing strategy. They have to differentiate themselves from other chain sports bars, so they try to make themselves seem “extreme” and “exciting.” Guys, you’re just serving food, it’s just ordinary food, please relax.
Duffy’s Sports Grill
For starters, the world would be a better place if this restaurant didn’t exist. They’re just trying to be Applebee’s 2: Return of the Poorly Thought Out Menu and they’re not even doing it well. The approval rating of Duffy’s Sports Grill is laughably low, and they are closing down left and right.
Fricker’s
Whoever decided to name this establishment deserves to be banned from running a business in the United States, period. Fricker’s is so bad that this restaurant disabled comments and reviews from their Yelp and YouTube accounts. Although their 100 chicken wing bucket for $50 might seem enticing, you’d be better off just eating the $50 bill and moving onto a different spot.
Taco Mac
For a place named “Taco Mac,” they sure put a lot of emphasis on their hot wings and beer list. This is probably because their tacos are notoriously underwhelming and bland, that and of the 62 items on their menu, only 3 are taco platters. Oh yeah, and if you decide to choose a taco platter (say a prayer for those who do), you have the option to upgrade it to a quesadilla for just $1. Now, that’s good marketing.
Huddle House
Huddle House just sounds like a place that you don’t want to visit from the get-go. Once you take a peek at their menu, you’ll see that your original resistance was completely warranted. There’s nothing on this menu that isn’t a burger or a pancake, therefore, nothing for people that like to eat healthily. You can keep your “Triple HuddleBurger” to yourself, nobody wants to be a part of that.
Quaker Steak and Lube
If there is ever a religious apocalypse, Quaker Steak & Lube would likely be the reason behind it. Not only does this place serve the most absurd, unparalleled, horrifying fried food, it’s also a full-service bar connected to auto-shops in truck stops all over America. This place should not exist. Someone please, please wipe this place off the face of the Earth.