Bruegger's Bagels - Iowa City

Very stingy with the cream cheese if you order a cream cheese bagel. Definitely not an adequate amount for eating both halves of the bagel. But my real issue with this place is that they charge you significantly more for a cheese-jalapeño bagel than they do for a plain or sesame. Before moving to Iowa City I had been getting bagels from Brueggers for years (since the 1990s) without ever getting charged extra for my favorite type of bagel.

Food is spot on. Efficiency is not. Line to the door. OK, they 're busy, I get it. One guy taking money and making all the drinks. Horribly inefficient. Long long-haired guy is great, sings, good attitude, seems to be there every time we go in, but the shorter dark-haired guy is their best employee. Saw that the cash register was the bottleneck and stepped off the line to check out 4-5 customers while the normal cashier made coffee drinks. If a fair portion of your business is hot/cold drinks, that needs a dedicated employee. Perhaps they 're short-handed, but it was a significant wait and it wasn 't due to food preparation. Also always seem to have water leaks. I notified a guy behind the counter of the leak all over the floor and he just said It 's a never-ending battle and shrugged it off. Huge slip hazard, light fixture literally hanging from a water-logged ceiling tile while water steady streamed onto the concrete floor.