Au Bon Pain

Get ready to wait forever for subpar food.
While waiting, I always think how this business stays open. I understand it may take a bit when its busy, but its consistently garbage.
Service: poor
Food: poor
It’s usually a hard decision between eating here or starving. sry not sry

Just to reiterate what everyone else has already said: this service is absolutely horrible. I don’t know why UIC hires the rudest, slowest, incompetent people to work at its dining services instead of just hiring students looking for work.
I have a running theory that the university gets a fat tax exemption by hiring «at risk» women (or something along those lines) to work at Au Bön Pain (and Wendys for that matter) because because the staff at these places clearly hate their job and don’t give a crap.
The food itself is fine, especially the soups. But for the price and god awful wait, it’s worth walking to Fontano’s or Jimmy Johns. Or subway if you’re really desperate.
*there have been one or two friendly cashiers that don’t fit this description, but that’s about it

Terrible service. I once ordered a sandwich here and heard the women making it talking about the name (Jesus) on the order, «How could you name your baby Jesus»… bla bla bla… etc. Needless to say I was offended, and on top of that the sandwich sucked. I mean, you can talk about my Momma if you make a decent sandwich, but if you talk about my Momma and your sandwich sucks, we got a problem.
Sidenote: UIC People… I hate smelling your stinking Au Bön Pain soups in lecture. Don’t bring your food into class everyday. It makes people want to punch you.

I love Au Bön Pain, but I have never been to this particular one without questioning my sanity. The sandwich station works at the pace of a snail, even when it’s a not busy time. I’m not asking them to rush, but after 10 minutes of waiting for my Newport Turkey I’m tempted to hop the counter and start slicing bread myself.
So be warned, if you are in a hurry grab a southwest salad (best one IMO) from the cooler and then pray to your god the check out line isn’t ridiculous…

If I could give this place no stars I would and that would still be too much. Wanted a sandwich, just a turkey club and mac and cheese. I stood by the sandwich counter watching the two women make sandwiches for about 8 minutes before they took my order. I went and packaged a small mac and cheese and came back to wait for my sandwich. The two women didn’t seem to care about how long they took and there didn’t seem to be any logic to what they were doing. The guy behind me commented on how they might benefit from a Subway style assembly line. 7 minutes later the women who I ordered with looks at me and asks if I want Chipotle mayo. The turkey club has regular mayo, and I told her that was what I wanted on it. Turns out they were out of mayo and I wasted 15 minutes of standing there for her to realize it. I said forget it and grabbed a wrap out of the cooler. The wrap was good, but not worth the $. Also the paper around the wrap was wrapped in the lettuce, so be careful or you’ll be eating paper.
I’ve eaten here before and had the same experience. Stand in line to order, get sick of waiting, give up and grab a wrap. This time I wanted a warm sandwich, but I guess it just is never meant to be. Also, I went at 1:10 so it wasn’t in between classes and not at the peak lunch times.
I wouldn’t recommend this place. Au Bön Pain would be much better off to hire students, but I doubt UIC catering would let them. Eat at the café in UH– they actually hire students that WANT to work, have good food, and aren’t as overpriced. They are also SO much quicker.

Soup was the only decent food there other than their bagels. Everything else is a little bit pricey & the bread sticks that goes with the soup are pretty stale :/

Staff often rude and very slow. Most food prep staff seem to have not received any training whatsoever. I have received sandwiches made incorrectly several times. Service is pretty abysmal all around. Portion sizes are fine, but seem small for this price point. Unfortunately this is the only healthy option nearby available between classes so we’re stuck with Au Bön Pain. I wonder if other locations suck this much?

All six of the coffee makers were out at 9:30 AM. Multiple people told the staff, but the coffee wasn’t brought in the back to be refilled for several minutes. I asked an employee when she thought the coffee would be done (I had already been waiting 8 minutes), she stated that she didn’t know and was sick of people asking her that… excuse me? These people need some training in costumer service, with the exception of the two ladies that were making the sandwiches.

I got a chicken cesar wrap which fell apart as soon as I took a bite. It was not cut in half which is probably why. I basically had to re wrap it myself. I don’t mind paying $ 6 for a decent sandwich, but this was sloppy, and an inconvenience especially since most students get food to eat in class. Im giving it two stars because I’ve been waiting for UIC to open a place like this, but I wish it as good of quality as the other chains around the city.

This was the first week that it opened and boy is it crazy! I don’t know if it’s just me but the sandwich people are always asking if I want to buy a sandwich. If I said no the first 3 times, you think they would get the point and stop asking. Wrong. So haven’t tried any of the sandwiches for that reason, but the soups are yummy. I will come back to try the various pastries and probably a sandwich too.