The overall job is easy once you get used to it. It may seem complicated but team members always ensure you’re learning and will never get frustrated with you; always willing to help!
Pros:
Good pay
Stable hours (I had open availability so my hours averaged 25-30; 5-6 days a week)
Day off request are cool as long as you request them off in a timely manner you’ll always get the days off you want.
Cons:
This isn’t a chick fil a or canes so expect some really slow days or days that will be busy one moment then dead the next. You’ll have to be really creative in finding things to do to occupy yourself that are work related specifically if you’re working foh since our responsibilities our limited.
As I mentioned we do experience our fair share of rushes especially on weekends even on a Monday during lunch hour it will get pretty busy. It can get overwhelming and sometimes you’ll be the only one up front once you’ve learned both foh stations, which will make it hard.
Customers can be annoying and rude but that’s to be expected. With that being said sometimes I felt the company valued customers over the employees. They’d always want to satisfy the customer rather than taking our side...
Environment: again, friendly co workers but one thing I didn’t care for was the constant gossip or talking about one another I would witness. I never engaged in it but sometimes I felt we weren’t on the same page a lot and people would talk about the manager, a co worker or anyone who did something
ProsGood pay, stable hours
ConsUnderstaffed
4.0
Assistant General Manager | Roseville, MN | Jun 5, 2013
Fun workplace, with lack of management and advancement.
A typical day of work includes: putting away orders, setting up the restaurant, making sure the team in in the right place, having a back up plan if things go ary, taking temperatures of all the food and sauces to make sure they're in range, getting people on breaks, delegating cut-work and second responsibilities, being a rock for whoever seems to be struggling at a given time, making sure labor and sales are in line with projections, cutting people if they're not, placing any orders, writing the prep list, counting drawers, counting the bank over to the PM manager, and making sure the restaurant is set up for success at the end of the second revenue.
The most important thing I learned at Noodles is how to stay calm and think on my toes. It's hard to work through a problem and not let emotions get in the way, but it is possible. I also learned a lot of other things like budgeting, writing projections and using those projections to run the shift, multitasking-probably the second most important, and I learned how to work around people with all sorts of personalities.
The management is very poor at noodles and I have found that they break a lot of HR rules. It wasn't always this way, or it was and I just didn't notice. As of late, I feel more like a tool and that the higher up you go the less responsibility you have. There is also little chance of advancement. They always seem to say they want you to advance, but deny you the opportunities when they come along. I really
Typical High-School entry level Restaurant work. Just a step up from Fast food.
The noodles I work at has been pretty good up until about the summer.
They were very flexible with my busy schedule and the pay is rather decent (9.00/hr with a .50 raise every 6 months) for a High School student. The work you do is also pretty Simple in my opinon. However I had coworkers who struggled with basic cleaning or sanitation. I think I was sometimes the only person who would remember to change out Sani-buckets and wash hands after bussing tables. But I guess that's just what happens when you have people with their first job ever at 16.
The workflow for Front of House is weird and I'm honestly not a fan of it although I can manage to do it very well. They have 3 stations based on what register you're assigned to. There's also a chart for procedures. Although the managers tried to enforce it as much as possible and I did my best to follow it rarely was it followed and I'd find myself forced out of my task to Serve and pack orders to be on the secondary register taking orders while the primary register forces me out of what I'm doing because I had to focus on my secondary duty of bussing tables for 5 minutes and they didn't have a customer and didn't want to do their secondary duty of cleaning a window or welcoming customers or whatever excuse they wanted.
But sometimes I'd be scheduled with people who would follow procedures and things would run rather smoothly. Although I don't think it's best to assign the person serving trays and packaging to-go orders t
Definitely did not get paid enough for the work that was done, and the manager was ATROCIOUS
I worked at the Noodles and Company in the UTC mall in San Diego, CA for only about a month, and it was a huge mistake
So the job is basically a quick paced, busy kitchen, cook job. With how chaotic the work environment was along with the the demand for total attention to detail made me quickly feel underpaid with their salary being only 50 cents higher than the San Diego minimum wage. On at least 4 occasions they gave me consecutive closing and opening shifts, which means I would close the Saute Line by as late as 11:15 pm sometimes, and was expected to show up to the place the next morning by 7:00 am. The manager would also consistently micromanage, and went out of his way to talk down to his employees. Right when I was hired I was basically warned about him in one way or another by all the employees, and two employees that were on their two week notice when I joined the team had told me that the reason they quit was because of the manager.
So I recognized quickly that this was not a sustainable job position, with it being extremely energy consuming while still essentially paying minimum wage, not to mention that it was a toxic work environment. I also happened to be going through some family and home stability issue that more or less forced me to quit without notice.
Now if this was a normal horrible boss story this is where it would end, but it was not over. I got lucky, nailed an interview, and got told I was hired at the place next door in the mall, Kazanori.
Fast paced, friendly team members, poor management
When i first started at Noodles & Company in 2016, I thought working in the food industry was gonna be stressful and overbearing but i was heavily proven wrong. Both the team members and managers i was introduced to at the time were super welcoming, funny, friendly, and a blast to work with. It even came to the point were i felt super comfortable working with them within a month and found them to be my good friends outside of the workplace.
All was well until new management had rolled in during the beginning of 2017 and it felt as if the Noodles staff went from a family to a group of "replaceable" workers whom are required to clock on, do work, and clock out. Nothing else in between. Management began to intertwine personal relationships within team members into the workplace, strong workers are often taken advantage of (negatively), enacting acts of favoritism, contradictions concerning company policies (criticizing team members for broken rules while breaking the same rules themselves), and other things in that relative nature. The evolution of the workplace was night and day and not only is this apparent to myself and other workers, but guests have also commented on such change through word-of-mouth and through company-distributed customer surveys. Workers began to feel very "on edge" and nervous around management, thus making the atmosphere of both the workplace AND restaurant in general, very cut throat in a sense. For example, making one mistake as a well-established
ProsFriendly team members, great customer service experience, good food handling experience, fast paced environment
ConsPoor management, good flexible workers are taken advantage of
Noodles and Company started out rough, got better, then got rough again. Where I work, we are one of the top 10 busiest locations. You need to be fast and restock whenever you are able to. Don't be lazy and show up on time and you have job security. 90% of customers are pretty chill, 5% are extraordinary, 5% are terrible or want free food or meat.
PROS:
- You will not lose the job
- Some benefits are offered
- Plenty of hours you can work.
- Start at $10/hr
- Scholarships are offered. I won the national $3000 one and it was great!
- You can play your music from time to time, provided it is appropriate and not too loud
- 70% discount on food if you are working that day up to $7, 30% if you are not working that day.
- 100% discount on food up to $12 if you work there for 3+ years - even off duty.
- Free soda from fountain drink station
- Twice in the five years I've worked there my drawer has been off $100+ (someone stole it). The company took the hit for me; saving me $300.
CONS:
- Raises are 3-20 cents. I'm not kidding. On that note, if the menu price goes up, your employee discount does not.
- Our area manager should be fired; we have gone through 4 general managers in 5 years because they don't meet her expectations which are unrealistic.
- Shelving has been taken away and not replaced, making it harder for us to store spare products and supplies.
- It is difficult to leave on time due to lack of staff
- No benefits for winning employee of the month, an
Great Food, Positive People, no consideration for the employee
Typical work day at noodles begins with you clocking in usually about 10 or 11 am. your working from 11 am till 6 pm the work flow is steady for about an hour and a half your bouncing between serving, cashier, greeting, busing and washing dishes. then the lunch rush comes in you still have to do all the previous tasks with not much help because you may have a max of 3 people in the kitchen one being a supervisor and you a manger and one other front house worker who is supposed to just be a greeter and cashier however after about 15 mins the manager disappears into the back while the rush is still going on so now it's you and your coworker upfront and you have do the job of 3 people in short amount of time. The kitchen supervisor trys to help up front a bit which 2 people in the kitchen, doing saute, silver bowl, stove, appetizers and expediting and the supervisor helping you leaves for the day in 30 mins. so time passes 30 mins pass the kitchen supervisors leaves guests are still coming in not as much as before so that steady flow is coming back however the dining room is a mess and dish is backed up so you focus on cleaning. it's about 2:15 now you go on back to work on dish and you see the manager siting down checking her E-mail and on the phone with another noodles in the area. after 15 mins of dish washing cleaning and the occasional meal order. now you know your co worker leaves at 5 and you leave at 6 the manager gets off the phone and the computer finally and tells yo
Noodles was a progressive and fair work environment great for building skills and friendships
My average day at work would be either opening or closing the store, arriving at 7am or 4pm and working a 6-7 hour shift where i was in charge of my crew members and maintaining a high quality of work and cleanliness, at the ends of my shifts I would take the drawers back to the desk count them down and record any cash shortages or extra balanced drawers. If it was a morning shift i'd take the deposit and change order in as well.
I learned a lot about people in the workplace and how to get them to work hard for you a lot of the time its just asking the right way and everyone is different so having a military-type leadership style works for some employees but not for all of them. I also became an expert on working with high school kids, a lot of my fellow members of management would complain about how difficult it was to keep them on task but I never had trouble with it, I believe this is because I liked having shift rally and 1 on 1's almost every shift to keep everyone focused on the goals for that day.
For the culture of noodles i'd have to say its a company that looks for something new constantly, new menu every 6 months and new promotions just as quick. They believed that the mac n cheese is what got them this far but zucchini noodles are whats going to take them to the next level, a very optimistic company that made it easy to stay positive.
Honestly the hardest part of the job was just being understaffed, Labor was a big importance and unfortunately at some ti
ProsFree food, employee compensation for hard work, discounts for family
Good for a beginner, not great for anyone above novice
If you are a highschooler that doesn't have much experience (or just anyone who doesn't have very much experience), this is a very good job. They pay a few bucks more than minimum wage and you get discounted meals (free meal per shift now as I'm writing this during the pandemic). They have flexible hours for anyone in school or anyone who has another job. Most of the workers are all very nice. The benefits for a part time worker are very minimal. If you work full time, you can get health insurance albeit expensive health insurance. If you start in the front and move to the back, you get paid more but you usually have to annoy your gm about the raise. If you don't, you won't get paid the amount you should be getting paid, they're just leave you at the pay you had in front but with the responsibilities of someone in back.
The main issue is if you move up to a shift leader. You only make about two dollars more than someone that just started (sometimes even less depending on how much they hire someone on for). You get a lot more junk thrown at you than you ever should as a manager. It depends on who your general manager and assistant general manager is, but a lot of the time you'll have to close multiple sections because people just don't come in for their shift. So, you're getting paid the same amount you would closing just one section closing several sections. It's unfair and it feels like you're being used. If you're a part time shift lead (or even just a part time worker), I
ProsDecent pay, Discounted Meal, Flexible Hours
ConsLack of Benefits, Bad Pay for Managers, Little Control for Managers
I worked there a year and a couple months. Within that time I became a manager was told I was going to get over 13 and the head of management went under my head. I ended up getting told they were only allowing me 12.50. For the amount of cleaning and babysitting I had to do with the crew members, I obliviously was scammed out of pay. I had to clean disgusting drains multiple times because no one else would help.As a shift manager I had to run 9 to 9 days with no other managers during COVID and even before then staffing was always an issue. They would have me close Thursday’s with minors, which we had to close at 10 and minors had to leave by 11. If my crew members decided to hate me that day, I’d be left with multiple dishes to clean after they left, the floors to still be deck scrubbed and squeegeed, sometimes part of their area of the kitchen still dirty, and the scheduling managers would give me all minors on those days. I had spent multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE, days struggling way past 12 trying to get the store in order. There were weeks where I would have 60 hours. They made me work on days I would have to go to my college classes. I would show up late due to orders and got a grade marked down due to my tardiness for the class. Another thing is when COVID started they made me drive to stores that were an hour away to work without any gas compensation. I once walked in on my GM and her daughter talking badly about me just because I felt I deserved gas pay. Don’t get me
ProsYou get free food
ConsEverything else
Questions And Answers about Noodles & Company
If you were to leave Noodles & Company, what would be the reason?
Asked Mar 16, 2017
Overworking and bad management.
Answered Sep 20, 2019
The upper management doesn't care about the employees! Please don't work here!
Answered Sep 8, 2019
If you were in charge, what would you do to make Noodles & Company a better place to work?
Asked Feb 10, 2017
I believe the company is good where it stands. Even through these hard times we have been able to adapt and put enhanced procedures policies in place to ensure our teams and guest are safe.
Answered Oct 29, 2020
More money and at least one more hour for the closing shift
Answered Jun 13, 2020
What tips or advice would you give to someone interviewing at Noodles & Company?
Asked Aug 22, 2016
Show your personality and be you. also, don't try to worry too much :)
Answered Feb 25, 2019
Make sure you dont get sucked into moving up if you dont intend to make it your career and or if you want to balance a personal life.
Answered Jan 2, 2018
Do you get paid every week or just twice a week?
Asked Sep 12, 2017
The regular pay schedule is every 2 weeks, however there is a new feature where you can be paid earned wages whenever you need it - very useful employee perk!
Answered Jan 15, 2020
You get paid bi-weekly
Answered Oct 21, 2018
Does noodles do a background check?
Asked Apr 24, 2017
Just changed policy no background checks
Answered Sep 10, 2020
Barely and don’t care about the results that come back from it
