I am no longer seeing the black and white bear shops. Are they gone, or are any of you still seeing them?

I haven't seen them since the first of the year.

I think they figured out the report wasn't that valuable.

I'll miss all the free condiments, I used them in my own cooking.

People are pulling back from eating out, and companies are scrambling to make cuts. Even pizza chains are closing a large percentage of locations, with announcements from Pizza Hut and Papa John's recently. I expect to see a drop in the number of assignments and further reductions in pay, along with long-standing programs discontinued. Ironically, this is exactly the time when companies most need solid data on customer experience; it's just a matter of how much they value it.

I haven't seen any shops at all. but I'm still playing their silly games and getting discounts and using my stored up points. Hopefully there will be new shops before I run out of points and discounts.

The shops were being done in 2026 in limited markets.. They scaled back where they are doing them. I don't see any now, but maybe they are done for April?

Maybe they have stopped the program. I will check in May again to see if I see them. They are not in my area, but they were in the outlying areas of Southern California (and maybe other places too).

There was one day I did like 6 in one afternoon. Loaded up leftovers for the week.

I was wondering this myself. It's making me sad how many of the shops I came to rely on have suddenly dried up. I was a big shopper for this company and now they have nothing left that I'm interested in.

@FeelinSassie "pizza chains are closing a large percentage of locations"? These two large pizza operators are targeting underperforming stores where Pizza Hut is closing 3.5% of USA locations and Papa John's 8.5% of its North American stores which is far from a large percentage. I agree with you that these operators need solid data, but I think it comes down to how much these mystery shopping companies want to pay mystery shoppers.

My daughter loves that place, so we will being going shop or not :O)

They have another $8 bonus gift card promo when you purchase $30, this time for Mother's Day. [www.pandaexpress.com]

I've seen none in the upper midwest in 2026. Super easy job and good quick dinner!

Gotta admit they make good Americanized Chinese food. Just too cheap to pay $15 out of pocket. A lot of Chinese takeouts in NYC are just crap because they're trying to keep the cost down to compete with another on the next block.

I always assumed that the home office required the franchises to have a continuous quality improvement program of sorts and that drove our assignments. In essence, I always assumed we were “narcing” on them. Other than that, yeah, I don’t see where they get much of a ROI for the amount of evaluations we perform.

@metro25782

They were focused on speed of service and appearance issues. They wanted to make sure stores were in compliance (offering gift cards at the register), proper promotional item signage, etc.

@hbbigdaddy wrote:

@metro25782

They were focused on speed of service and appearance issues. They wanted to make sure stores were in compliance (offering gift cards at the register), proper promotional item signage, etc.

By “they”...you mean the individual franchisee or the home office? I always assumed the home office forced the franchisees to have some sort of program to show improvements and mystery shopping was the easiest way to do it because it also drove sales.

it was a national project driven by corporate that had all the locations done (corporate/franchise). Are you implying only franchises are doing it now? I would think there are quite a few franchise locations in urban los angeles and none of them are being shopped currently.

I'd bet money that they are all franchises around here.

I believe this because there are two stores that are relatively close to each other that can't cook the food right to save their lives, I believe they are both owned by the same folks. Raw cold super greens, still crisp and cold from the fridge, but you can tell it was in a pan for a second or three, the kale leaves are a little wilted on the edges, and the broccoli buds are slightly warm, can't really say much about the cabbage, in fact, these two stores don't put but a couple pieces of cabbage in any given batch of super greens.

In a different town, not too far away, they cook the super greens perfectly, warm all the way through, the cabbage (lots of it) is sweet, soft and just a little crunchy, just the way it should be, the kale is fully wilted and the stems are just slightly crunchy, and the broccoli stems are warm all the way through, slightly crunchy, but tender, and the flowers are all the way cooked and sweet.

There is one store in Madison that doesn't cook the noodles in the "chow mein" It's always dry and hard with sauce on it on the warming table. Everything at that store is under cooked, or over cooked, dry and crispy. And I mean everything. The food there is almost edible. We've gone back a couple times and still find nothing has changed on the steam table, we only bought food there once, but we wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, and we went back a couple times to see..

Wonder what happen to the Panda Express shops? They had a round earlier this year for specific locations and evening time window. Anyone know if they are coming back?