Gumby's Pizza - CE Score: 4

CE Rank: 4

Culinary Esquire - The B/CS Restaurant guide

BACKGROUND ON GUMBY’S: Gumby’s is a franchise with most of it’s locations built near University’s due to its late night hours. We got curious about Gumby’s after seeing a picture of a pizza online with cheese sticks and fries. Our interest was piqued because we expected a wide variety of pizza ingredients with a unique selection. There are currently two locations in College Station according to Google. We decided to visit the original location on Dominik because it is the one closest to Texas A&M University.

FIRST IMPRESSION:As we pulled up we noticed that the drive through seemed busy but there weren’t any customer cars parked in the parking lot.

There is not much space for ordering when you first walk in and we can see how it might get congested if they were to get a rush. Behind the cashier is a menu selection board to place your order or take a look at a paper to-go menu. We also noticed a great deal of bottle drinks are stacked behind the cashier so there may be limited storage.

The seating area is to the right and seems fun with Christmas lights and fun pictures decorating the walls.

DRINKS: Bottled drinks, fountain drinks available

MENU SELECTION: While they have a variety of items, there were some basic things that we asked about that they did not have, such as basil and oregano. After you order you can seat yourself as you wait for your pizza.

DINING AREA IMPRESSION:As the only customers in the restaurant we had the option to choose any place we wanted to sit. We prepared our table with individual packets of parmesan and crushed red pepper packets and started to look around at the decorations and pictures on the wall.

Having waited for 20 minutes for our food we had plenty of time to take in the whole dining room experience. We then noticed a significant number of water stains on the ceiling and extremely dirty air vents. We became uncomfortable sitting at the table we were at initially because it was right underneath an air vent that appeared to have black mold on it. While we are not air ventilation or mold specialist, we are consumers of food and worry about anything that may contaminate our food so we moved to a different table.

We decided that we would go ahead and stay and try the food so that we could provide feedback on the taste and overall quality of the food. However, by the time our pizzas came out and one of our reviewers tried to take a bite, the psychological effect of the terrible condition of the ceiling had taken its toll. We have to ask ourselves, if a restaurant allows the dining area that their customers dine in to deteriorate to a condition such as that, what is the state of the condition of the kitchen that the food is prepared in?

After taking only one bite and getting nauseous, one of our reviewers had to walk away from the pizza and go out to the car. “I really don’t even remember what it tasted like, I just couldn’t stay there and eat any more under those air vents.” We decided that we should just ask to get our money back and review based on the 30-40 minute experience that we had just had.

When brought to a manager’s attention, he said “We just had a health inspection and we passed with a 94. They didn’t say anything about the mold, they just said something about the flies.” We asked them regardless of whether it was mold or not, why weren’t the vents cleaned and his reply was that they were busy. Quick recap, we were the only customers in the restaurant at that time. The manager also said that they are focused on their new location in South College Station so they haven’t been focused on this location. We feel like the manager just kept giving excuses and did not really care or value the important of our observation. We asked for a refund and the manager at least agreed to give us our money back.

OVERALL: After leaving we checked out Gumby’s core values listed on their website.

“Gumby’s Pizza has built its business on a strong foundation of excellent quality products, superb customer service and great value. Like a builder who works hard to make sure each foundation of a building is perfect because he wants the building to last, Gumby’s Pizza works hard on the foundation building blocks of its business. Quality is the first building block in the Gumby’s foundation for success. We use only the finest, freshest meats and vegetables possible while making our pizza dough from scratch every day. An equally important second building block – superb customer service, is reflected in our philosophy: “don’t just satisfy the customer – impress them!” Our store personnel dedicate themselves to making each order fast and right. The mortar in our business is our value-based pricing, which keeps our customers coming back, time and time again. Quality products, superb service and great value; that’s Gumby’s Pizza!”

While this sounds great, this is not what we experienced. We did not feel the passion from the menu selections as there were so many staple pizza items not available, such as basil and oregano. While superb service is one of their foundational building blocks, our pizza’s were stacked in a window, not even brought to our table personally even though we were the only customers in the restaurant. In regards to the value-based pricing, we were again disappointed. Two individual size 10” pizza’s (one with 2 toppings one with 3 toppings) plus 2 drinks were $25. Other pizza places we’ve been to have been able to give customers far better deals for $25.

WHAT THEY DID RIGHT: “Gave us our money back.”

SCORING:

1⭐Atmosphere (very dirty and unkept)

1⭐Price (overpriced)

0⭐Food (we don’t feel like we can rate this at this time)

1⭐Service (no one else was in the restaurant but we still had to get up to get our food)

1⭐Guide's choice (worst dining room we’ve seen in a while, possible food contaminants and poor air quality)

TOTAL = 4 ⭐ OVERALL CE Score

GAMBLE OUTCOME: LOSE We always say that trying new places is like a gamble, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This was definitely a loss! We will not be going back, at least not to this location.

ABOUT THIS RATING: To give our rating the most objective weight we use 5 areas to score the restaurant: atmosphere, price, food, service and guide's choice. The maximum score in each area is 5 stars for a possible total score of 25 stars. Because most review sites use a 5 star rating system we then divide our total score by 5.

Therefore,

21-25 stars = 5 stars 16-20 stars = 4 stars 11-15 stars = 3 stars 6-10 stars = 2 stars 1-5 stars = 1 star

Website: Gumby's Pizza