The Coffee Club — Restaurant in District of Canberra Central

I just had a horrible experience at the Coffee Club at the Canberra Outlet Centre.

After ordering calamari for myself and pancakes for my 4 year old, I found myself waiting for at least 20 minutes and saw other customers orders get delivered even though they had arrived and ordered after me.

I watched the servery window and saw what was my meal and that of others sit there for over 5 minutes even though the kitchen was ringing a bell at least 4 times to get attention of the 5-6 other staff working on the floor.

When the food arrived it didn’t resemble the picture in the menu at all, the calamari was very thin, over cooked and the sauce and salad had been clearly affected by the time under the warming area.

I went to cut up my daughters pancakes (which arrived without cream, ice cream and chocolate sauce as ordered) and the top pancake was so hard and crispy I was able to pick it up and tap it against my plate. It resembled a biscuit rather than a pancake.

At this point I called the attention of one of the staff and raised concerns about my meal and based on the time already waiting I asked for my money back. This is when things got interesting. I was summoned up to the counter and spoke with a supervisor, who I believe is the owner, named Vanessa. She was rude and challenged me aggressively about the calamari and even said that their meals never look like the pictures in the menu.

After persisting, she reluctantly gave me my money back for the 2 meals, but I still had paid for the drinks (a Coke Zero and a kids strawberry milkshake).

As I went to leave I attempted to collect my daughters milkshake and the table had been cleared, so I asked for my milkshake and was told by the supervisor that she wasn’t going to give me this and she had already refunded me my meal even though it was fine. She even went to the point of grabbing the meal and pushing it in my face, squeezing the dry stringy calamari to show there was nothing wrong with it. She said she wasn’t going to give me the money back for my drinks or replace the milkshake.

At this point I became very frustrated and said I was prepared to wait all day. She said I could complain if I wanted. At this point I spoke in a louder voice about the fact that they had removed the drink from the table whilst I was at the counter discussing the meal.

After several more minutes she reluctantly replaced the milkshake. At no point during the interaction did she show any remorse or offer any form of acknowledgement or apology for the state of the meals. I find this extremely troubling as this type of behavior is very damaging to your brand with the variety of food choices in this location, I will consider very carefully before visiting again.

Having worked for leading retailers across the past 20 years, customer satisfaction is extremely important and when things don’t go to plan a customer centric approach and care is the best tool to address and repair a relationship. This supervisor doesn’t possess any of...

a few months ago this was a decent cafe whose food was worth the price. after coming back today this will be the last time i come back today. we ordered “club nachos” on the TO SHARE part of the menu. i can definitely say that plate was not big enough to share. imagine you buy a small packet of doritos (the original flavour you’d buy your kids for school), buy a packet of cheese and chuck on a teaspoon of tomato paste that had been microwaved to the point of the cheese only having the oil left. after making it become presentable chuck on a gallop of sour cream and guacamole to drown the flavour corn chips and serve it. there you have it. the coffeeclubs™️ club nacho recipie. so after that has been served to you, you double check the menu to make sure you ordered the “club nachos to share”. and look back at where the waiters pick up the food from the kitchen. you see a big bowl of nachos and a guy from the kitchen goes along and takes them and eats them for himself. god they sure looked familiar... almost like the old beef nachos you’d get before they changed the menu. i’m not going to blame the waiters, the cashiers and only partly the chefs because this was next level disappointing. i mean, if you’re gonna have “club nachos” i really hoped the owner did pay for the amount he made for himself. honestly just change the menu back...

Service was ok. Food was alright. My breakfast burger was decent and the eggs were fried quite nice, the bacon was good but a little cold, the chicken burger we also ordered was dry as however. The chips he had were really nice though respectfully. The food there is moderate to overpriced, $2 for a tiny sauce that probably isn’t homemade is honestly sad. And that’s not the only thing we noticed. His burger cost more than mine and you’d still be better off with it instead. I got a chai and thought they mistakenly gave me an iced chocolate with how much they put in there (it was dark and both of us got iced Chai Lattes his was light brown) when I asked about it they said they put too much in there. It seems a little careless but it still tasted okay just a bit more stronger I had to mix all the cream to even it out,I hope this doesn’t happen all the time. The...