A southwest suburban Subway restaurant and a Starbucks at Chicago O’Hare International Airport achieved the dubious honor of being ranked among the 10 worst outlets for their respective chains in the U.S.
Both Chicago-area stores made the lists released recently by seobacklinks.com, a web SEO firm, based on Google reviews pulled earlier this month. The reports include the 10 best- and worst-rated locations in the U.S.
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No Chicago-area Starbucks or Subway made the 10-best list, but the region was represented on the worst. The sandwich shop at East 9th Street in Lockport was rated the fifth-worst Subway and the Starbucks at O’Hare’s Terminal 1, Concourse B, was the fourth-worst of the coffeehouse chain’s locations in the U.S., according to the study.
The Lockport Subway is a franchise location, while the O’Hare Starbucks is operated under a license by HMSHost, an airport concessionaire.
Subway did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, while Starbucks essentially deferred to the O’Hare licensee, HMSHost.
While subway service is not something generally associated with the historic river town of Lockport, service at the Subway restaurant on East 9th Street is a hot topic online, with a plethora of one-star reviews from disgruntled customers.
“Employees never in a good mood, the place smells, and the sandwiches are very very thin (skimpy on meats,” one customer posted. Another complained the sandwich maker “didn’t follow instructions … and refused to remake it.”
One customer even upped the ante, calling it the “worst Subway on the face of this planet.”
In all, the Lockport Subway garnered an average of 2.02 stars out of 5 from 178 Google reviews as of Oct. 7, the worst rating in Illinois and fifth-worst in the nation. Reached by phone, a shift manager at the restaurant declined to comment Thursday.
Meanwhile, the busy O’Hare Starbucks engendered similar antipathy from customers online, averaging 1.84 stars from 118 Google reviews.
“If you want attitude with your coffee or just straight up rude service, visit this Starbucks,” one customer posted, a sentiment echoed in dozens of one-star reviews.
HMSHost, the Bethesda, Maryland-based airport concessionaire that operates the O’Hare Starbucks, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The survey pulled listings for 13,612 Subway restaurants across the U.S. with at least 100 Google reviews, compiling the rankings based on nearly 3 million total reviews.
The best-rated Subway stores in Illinois were on Barrington Road in Hoffman Estates, Kensington Road in Mount Prospect and Route 31 in Crystal Lake, according to the report. The top-rated nationally were in New York City; Cedar Grove, New Jersey and Rocklin, California.
The worst-rated Subway in the U.S. was in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, according to the report.
The Starbucks rankings covered 11,580 stores and nearly 5.7 million online reviews. Eight of the 10 lowest-rated locations in the U.S. were in airports, with Newark Liberty International ostensibly home to the chain’s worst coffeehouse, according to the report.
“An airport Starbucks has a captive audience,” Oliver Weston, founder of seobacklinks.com, said in a news release. “People are rushing for a flight, there’s often nowhere else to get a coffee, and the line doesn’t move any faster because your gate is closing. That’s why eight of the 10 lowest-rated Starbucks in the country are in airports.”
The best-rated Starbucks in Illinois were on Main Street in Barrington, Williams Street in Crystal Lake and on North Broadway in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, the report found.
Seattle-based Starbucks is in the midst of renovating 1,000 stores in North America, including a planned 200 locations in the Chicago area, under its “Back to Starbucks” restructuring plan, a campaign to improve performance and the in-store experience across the chain.
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