Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well in some way's this is a complete surprise, and in others it's not unexpected.

To my memory this was the first Moe's location in Columbia, and opened shortly after I moved back to town. When it opened, it was a super place. The crew was well-trained and topnotch-on execution, and the burritos were tasty, well made, and never blew-out. The chips were always crisp and the salsa-bar well stocked, and the ice tea was some of the best I have had in fast-food: brewed strong and always very fresh. The menu names were quirky,but I quickly latched on to the Art Vandelay and I could order that and just let them make it as stated with very minimum customization.

While they place catered to adults to some extent -- for years beer was a beverage option, it also catered heavily to kids with one night every week dedicated to balloon animals and face-painting with special outside providers who would stop by and entertain the always packed dining room. They also had a promotion for regular folks, Moe Monday, a day when burritoes could be had for really quite economical outlays.

In general, I would make this my lunch stop on Mondays & Wednesdays, and life was good.

Gradually things started to change. The initial staff drifted away, and the new hires were noticably not as good. They stoped hiring the face painters and balloon lady, and the food quality started to go down. Sometimes the rice would be crispy, sometimes the lettuce would be wilted, or they would replace the shredded lettuce with romaine, which really doesn't work. The chips were often burnt or chewy and there were long-standing issues with bad smells in the drink machine area. Finally they stopped Moe Monday. For me, the nadir came when I stepped into the store and was the only customer, yet every table was dirty. I had cut my visits in half by that point, and was considering dropping it from the rotation entirely, but there were signs of hope along with more mixed ones. On the plus side, they got back people who had some idea what they were doing and didn't roll a burrito that would fall apart immediately, they also dumped the Freestyle machines that always got my hands wet and always had ice issues replacing them with standard fountains and a chewy ice dispenser. On the minus side, they dropped all the traditional item names and made it an ordeal to specify every single ingredient on your burrito, plus they tended to front-load ingredients, so if you were getting a little of everything, you would end up with a massive burrito that would, again, tend to fall apart. The chips were still uneven, but the quality of the ingredients had come back up some.

On the whole, I would have said things were stablizing, but when I pulled in today, the crew were loading up the trucks with all the mobile fixtures, and carting everything to the Devine location, a store which has its own issues (for instance, there's never any salt), but in general has a pretty good crew.

Oh well, it was nice (for about half the time) while it lasted.