Farmer’s BBQ

I went in a month ago. The counters were dirty, overflowing with papers. The sauces were sticky & mostly empty. Multiple drink choices on the soda fountain were empty. Place looked like it hadn’t been swept in days. Food looked a thousand times better than it tasted, and it didn’t look that good. My favorite item was the hush puppies, but the pork, mac & cheese & beans were all something I would never eat again.
The worst part is the obnoxious owner. I don’t have to tell you, look for yourself. Go to the Farmer’s BBQ twitter page and see some of the things he writes about the customers and his own employees. Read his responses to some of the reviews on this Unilocal page. He sucks and so does his restaurant.

I should have checked the reviews before going there. Hot wings without hot sauce! And when asked, the response was «we don’t have any sauce in the kitchen».
Waiters were too low on energy level. Seemed their favorite response was «NO» and «Sorry».
I will neither visit this place, nor will I recommend it to anyone”.

I don’t remember giving any place a «Eek!» I might have. But I remember not. Whether this one is the first or not, it was bad. The lady who looked like the owner tried to be nice to us. But we went there to eat and the Pulled Pork Sandwich that I had, and the Fresh Slaw that came as side, were terrible. The buns looked like they grabbed it from Joe’s and dipped it in greasy oil. The pulled pork was almost tasteless, the «fresh» slaw tasted like they just grabbed a bag from Teeter and… I have no idea what the sauce was. The fries, too, looked like they just got a bag from Teeter’s fridge and dipped it in a pan of whatever oil.
I usually don’t feel bad eating. I’m not picky when it comes to food. There was this one spring roll I had that made me think of dead chicken for some reason, and some local dish we had in our honeymoon in Bangkok that made me think, «is this made for humans?» This place was close to that experience. Maybe not exactly that whatever I had 2 years ago, but definitely stop of the list of places I-won’t-go-back to-​2014.

I don’t know where to start. This has to be the WORST BBQ place I have EVER eaten at in my life. The mac and cheese was horrible. The green beans had no taste and the meat was… there isn’t even a word to describe how bad it was. I usually read reviews before I go to places, but I figured how bad could it be. Let me tell you I won’t ever make that mistake again. No wonder this place is always empty. Whoever is cooking that food needs to be fired ASAP! This place needs new management and new employees quick… fast and in a hurry. If they don’t make some serious changes this place will close down. Lord I can’t believe I just wasted my money.

I wish I had of read the reviews beforehand… Worse BBQ I’ve ever had. The Half of chicken was burned on the outside and dry on the inside. the «Mac and cheese» was tasteless. Whatever they use for water, taste like tap water from old lead pipes (Don’t ask) and it permeated in all the food. The collard greens were tasteless except for that bad water taste. The «Cornbread» taste like gravel (Again, don’t ask)
This was the first time I actually ran out of a restaurant to avoid hearing the «How was the food» question. If I was paying I would have demand a full refund.

I’m so surprised to read all of the negative reviews. We’ve been eating at Farmer’s for about 4 years, and have never had a bad meal. Is it the world’s best bbq? Nope. But for a local joint, reasonably priced, and quick service, Farmer’s is a fine option.
As for the cleanliness issues, we have never noticed anything that concerned us.
I had the baby back ribs today, and they were delicious. I could only finish half of them, and didn’t need to add any sauce. I do use the Rocket Fuel for my fries though, I love that stuff!
Maybe I’m just not a bbq snob, but I like Farmer’s, I’ll be back.

Not quite sure how this business is still open to serve food! Yes they had a 95.5% Sanitation Score but obviously the inspector didn’t wear their glasses that day!
Floors were disgusting, every table needed to be cleaned and sanitized, every booth was full of crumbs and dirty, the utinsel and condiment counter was in complete disarray, no forks or napkins were out! Behind the counter looked as if a bomb had gone off, ceiling tiles were falling and this creepy creepy voice kept playing over the speaker with one country western song playing on a loop!
Strange strange place and why I stayed for a sandwich, I have no idea! Will never happen again!
Stay away until someone grows a brain and does a complete overhaul of this establishment!

Stay clear of this horrible business owner! My office staff came across Farmers BBQ website while looking for lunch ideas. We came across the picture of the crispy chicken sandwich and it looked mouth watering. The pic was 3 pieces of chicken tenders topped with a buffalo sauce on Texas toast. The price was $ 4.50 and it said that we could add a sweet tea and fries for an additional 2.50. The order came and the sandwiches were plain chicken without any sauce, the tea had no ice and was hot. The total for each person was $ 12.99! We were expecting $ 8 – 8.50 at the most. They charged $ 6.50 for the sandwich, plus fries, tea and added a $ 3.00 delivery fee for each order! They made $ 12 off delivery fees since 4 of us ordered separately an the office is only a ½ mile from the restaurant. One of the girls went to the restaurant and questioned the price difference and he stated that you have to order online to get those prices! they wanted to give her sauce to add and told her the ice melted. After she argued with the owner he decided to make more sandwiches and refunded her the difference. When I called about getting my refund THE OWNER said he was not going to refund anyone else’s money, and he didn’t care if we ever ordered from there again! When I told him that there was nowhere on the internet did it say the prices were only if you order through web he told me «well that’s the deal, and I’m not giving any more money back.» has since changed his prices on the internet. Customers service is terrible and the food was nasty!!! Internet pics and prices are misleading.

Seriously it should be rated a Negative 5 stars. This is the dirtiest business I have ever seen. I could go on but there are no words! I have NO idea how they are still open. I have worked at McDonalds as a teen and a fine dinning restuarant in college so I have an idea about what goes into getting a great health rating. The health rating can’t be right!

Yeah… I should have looked at te reviews about this place on the Unilocal app before I ate here… smh
If you are headed to this place as you are reading this… turn the car around, or even thinking of going to this place in the near future… forget it!!!
Had the blue ribbon platter (ribs, brisket, pulled pork, wings)…what do I think of it? They need to change the name to the #2 combo…(read between the lines!)
Beef brisket was rubbery… ribs were chewy, pulled pork was chalky… wings were TOOOOO done…(dog gone near cut the roof of my mouth)…the best part about my meal was the way that it smelled… GO ELSEWHERE!!! O_​o

I amsitting in farmers bbq on mallard creek while i write this. I just spent twenty minutes reading the mostly negative reviews of this place, and i have to admit that the peanut gallery makes a lot of good points. the health department sanitation score is 95.5 right now, but the place is seriously dingy. As I look around every table within sight is in dire need of being wiped down (vigorously). The sauce bottles are quite sticky, and the whole place just feels a little neglected. It is pretty much what my kitchen looks like when I REALLY don’t want to clean it, but my girlfriend makes me anyway.
Whatever, its clean enough to eat there. I have done so three times now, and every time the bbq pork has been excellent. Yes, it is a little bland without sauce. Now stop whining, get up, and try one of the many sauces sitting on the counter (which are very poorly labelled, and they aren’t all always out, which is pretty unacceptable during lunchtime, but whatever). they are all good, with the jerk being my personal favorite. I have tried a different side dish every time I have come here, and the results have meen mixed. Tthe hush puppies and green beans are good, the mac and cheese was pretty sub par. The sweet potato fries are really good, but come on-​make your own, don’t buy huge bags of frozen sweet potato fries. This is the kind of thing that really grinds my gears when going out of my way to eat local. The cornbread that comes with the lunch special is good, but nothing exceptional. The lunch special is six bucks and contains more food than i could possibly get down in one sitting. I cant comment on the rest of the menu, but this is a hell of a six dollar lunch. Pork or chicken, a side, cornbread, and a drink for a paltry outlay of cash.
As far as the service goes, my experience has ranged from excellent (a young lady who always looks energetic and happy, and greets you with enthusiasm when you walk in the door) to dazed and confused (owner). The over all dinginess does nlt bother me too much, it is more the attitude of the owner/​emloyees that this implies. If your restaurant is this slow every single table should be sparkling (you clearly have the time to wipe down the tables). I will ear here again (and again…). However, i fully understand why Firehouse Subs is packed to the brim right now and this place is almoat completely empty. A solid spring cleaning, a few thousand dollars in renovations, and a more receptive attitude towards customer feedback could take this place from sleepy to slammed in six months. In closing, I recommend the BBQ (I grew up in Lexington, NC, so take all the other un-​vetted opinions on the quality of this place you see with a grain of salt), ESPECIALLY at the price point, but the place kind of needs to get its act together. With a sanitation score in the 90s it is a perfectly safe place to eat, but the little things add up.
Food 4
Service 3
Atmosphere 1
Overall 3 (begrudgingly)

My husband and I have lived in Charlotte for over a year, and this is the only place we can say that we will definitely never eat at again.
I will summarize what we didn’t like:
— The floors were very dirty. It looked like someone had not cleaned them in days
— Every single table was sticky
— Their tea tasted spoiled, like it had been sitting out for a really long time
— Both of the guys behind the counter had been touching their clothes, on their cell phones and one handled our money, but neither washed their hands before they started preparing our food
— The food was cold (it wasn’t that it just wasn’t hot, it was actually cold)
— The food wasn’t even good
I probably never would have eaten there again anyway just based on how dirty the restaurant was but the bad food and tea definitely put the nail in the coffin for me.

To follow up on Eric’s lengthy sales pitch. Unilocal is not a pile on site unless you are serving up really poor products and you are unwilling to admit it to yourself. I would do this. I would stop what you are doing look around and look at all the negative comments and try to fix them. They all can’t be wrong. I wrote the review while I sat at Farmers BBQ so I was not aware of the other bad reviews until I posted mine so don’t imply I am some mindless web person who reads and repeats. You on the other hand never have any excuse for your place other than to say you are sorry and the reviewer must be wrong because of the reasons in your head that to you make you a good place to eat.
1. You have too many sauces!
2. Your food is cold!
3. Your food lacked passion
4. Your Staff looks bored and does not care.
5. Eric, you looked out of it in the middle of a very small lunch rush. Unorganized.
6. You store is a mess with all the stickers and other crap you have going on. Focus on BBQ and a few sauces… then the preparation
I love it when owners of bad restaurants get on Unilocal and blame Unilocal for the problems. No sir the problem is you. The problem is your store and your food. Own it and improve it. Your regulars are those people who might not know what good service and good BBQ looks like.
Just because the health inspector eats at you place does not mean anything. It only points out the uselessness of the health inspector. Are you also implying that the other restaurants do bribe the health inspectors but you don’t? Your endless rants about how you don’t suck are pointless. They all say the same thing, yet people keep posting 1 and 2 star reviews. So obviously you are not doing anything to improve the place.

Listen, I can’t sit here and tell you to go try Farmer’s BBQ. It simply is not that good. There’s really no reason to go out of your way to go here. But if you really want to go to Farmer’s and you want to make the most of your visit, I suggest going here for breakfast.
I’ve simply given up on going here for lunch or dinner and expecting to get a satisfying meal. It just isn’t gonna happen. The breakfast at Farmer’s however, is at least decent. I usually run the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. Which, though it seemingly takes forever it be prepared and brought to you, is inexpensive, and fairly tasty. The grits are also straight, though plain, they can easily be fixed with some salt, and pepper.
Having gone here on at least three or four occasions, hoping to finally get good food, I can unequivocally agree with previous reviewers who said this place is over priced, unorganized, messy on the inside, and simply does not have good food. The breakfast however, is at least serviceable.

Bottom line: Go next door and eat. Turn left, turn right, it doesn’t matter. There are a half-​dozen restaurants around this one and they are all clean. I am not saying that Farmer’s is rural SC convenience store bathroom dirty, but I wouldn’t eat lunch in them either. The windows and glass at the counter are hard to see through and I am sure that some of that comes from the smoke inside the restaurant. Perhaps they smoke their meats inside with no vent? Everything is sticky – the sauce bottles, the tables, I didn’t touch the cashier but I know I felt dirty when I left.
After paying close to $ 16 for two lunches – which seemed pricey to me – the cashier gave me my receipt and then came to my table and got it back so they could see what we ordered. You would think that would help them to get the order correct, but my potato salad turned out to be cole slaw. Swapping it out seemed like it would prolong the experience so we ate and left.

There is a specific group of people that come to restaurants and expect to have everything clean, the bathroom better be in order, and there sure as hell better be a staff that caters to their every whim because they deserve nothing less. Well the only problem with these people is they are assholes, and they ruin things for all those around them. The only problem with Farmers BBQ is they attract these assholes because local displaced yankees, obese gripers, and blue haired prunetangs are your core BBQ connoisseurs for lunch.
I’m from North Carolina, if it’s lunch time and I want good BBQ at a good price I am going to Farmers, if while there I have to get my hands sticky using the bottle to put BBQ sauce on my plate then so be it! Eating southern BBQ is about getting dirty and cleaning afterwards period! You aren’t eating it properly if you expected your experience to go any different, so I am not sure why everyone hates on this place for cleanliness.
This is what Farmers delivers, good (order it chopped) BBQ, excellent BBQ chicken, sweet potato waffle fries with honey, the best peach tea in the university area, and some delicious sauces to test on your food. Personal favorites include, white BBQ sauce (ask for it behind counter), jerk sauce, and the seasonal chile verde.
This is an inexpensive BBQ joint for lunch no reason to make it any more complicated than that. So stop by and check it out yourself, just make sure to pull the stick out of your ass first.

I am not particularly a knowledgeable BBQ eater. We visited the restaurant this evening. Family ordered crunchy chicken strips, but they were not crunchy. However, they were HUGE. Mom thoroughly enjoyed them but they were too thick for the kids. I ordered the smoked chicken with spicy BBQ sauce. What can I say, it was good. The fries were good, as was the iced tea. The kids ate my green beans so I guess that’s a good sign. The mac & cheese seemed to be a stove top version; I did not touch it.
There were two people working this evening and they were unable to adequately fulfill our food order. I had to keep telling them what to bring back to the table. One other table was occupied when we arrived but there was a stead stream of take-​out customers. The table next to us was dirty when we arrived and remained so throughout our meal.
Yes, they had a new 99.5 rating. Overall, the food was okay, service was friendly, but needs improvement to ensure orders are taken and delivered adequately. For what we spent in there this evening, it was not good enough for me to return any time soon.

If you’ve had good barbecue and have expectations of what it should be, don’t even try this place for several reasons. I had the BBQ pork and that is what I am reviewing, however I won’t even attempt to revisit and sample something else.
1. Flavor
For something that was «smoked for over 10 hours» (per the website), something definitely went wrong. It was far too bland. They say they like to serve it to you naked. Trust me, you’ll need the sauces. If this was smoked at all, I definitely couldn’t tell and trust me when I say I know what smoked meats taste like.
2. Consistency
Part of what is supposed to happen during a good, long smoke of a pork shoulder is for some of the fat to render out, keeping the meat moist but not soaked and laden with strings of it. It got to a point where it was actually hard to keep swallowing the sandwich. For pulled pork, you want to the sauces to be dripping, not the meat.
3. Cleanliness
I’ve read the other reviews on Unilocal and some of them have mentioned a low sanitation score. At this particular time, Farmer’s holds a 99. I don’t know how given the amount of leaves and dirt on the floor around the eating area and the drink dispenser.
All in all, just don’t. You’ll thank yourself later.

I new I should have checked Unilocal this place is nasty mac n cheese sour corn bread cold and bland chicken was dripping with grease .HUH. never seen BBq that was dripping with grease. Plus this place is not very clean … When I asked if I could take a picture of the smoker Manager told me NO I know why I am sure it was nasty .No one inside at this busy lunch location YUK. Do not waste your time had I not been in a hurry would have got my money back. NASTY

Driving by, we happened to notice the sign — «Farmer’s BBQ». That’s the sort of sign that grabs my attention. The inside actually looks a bit like you would expect. Not farm-​like, exactly, but not fancy either.
So we mosey up to the counter and try to figure out the menu. Unfortunately it’s a little complex. For a place called «Farmer’s», you would expect simple. It’s not bad, it just isn’t simple. We asked for help and didn’t really get it. You ask «what is good» and get «everything». I hate that.
I order the Blue Ribbon, or whatever it is called, as I’m already suspecting we won’t be back. It comes with pulled pork (not chopped — an important distinction), beef, ribs, a choice of strips or wings (not mentioned, but you can do it) and two sides. I chose sweet potato fries and mac and cheese.
The selling point of Farmer’s is that their meats are slow-​smoked over hickory, which is good. I’m all about that. Unfortunately, they forgot to get some flavor in there. The meat is tender, but not flavored. It’s like they wanted to tenderize the meat but allow you to add the flavor. Which they give you the option to do, with five sauces.
On the meats: They are all generally good and tender, but they lack flavor until you add the sauces. They give you large portions as well. We packed the leftovers into a to-​go box that just about required a crane to haul it off. It just would have been better if we didn’t have to have sauce.
That and the meat was so large — both the pork and the chicken — that it didn’t make for good sandwiches. We took them home, chopped them up and made good sandwiches out of them. Chopped up the ribs and added them to some beans and they were tasty. But in the store? Not so good.
There were two items that stood out. The chicken strips were awesome. Very tender, light breading. They made for a most excellent meal. Unfortunately I didn’t order them.
Sweet Tea Report: The second item was their Peach Sweeet Tea. Farmer’s has a «regular» Sweeet Tea, which is about average, but their Peach Sweeet Tea is really good. I don’t know that either is worthy of three «e“s, because they just aren’t that sweet. But the Peach flavor — even though I don’t really like peaches all that much — makes you go back for more.