Beaconsfield Village Bakehouse — Restaurant in Melbourne

Went in to get some cakes. I was the only customer in the shop. One girl was making coffee, one was making a milkshake. I cannot stand a bakery that prioritises drinks (especially coffees) over their main business. If you do that, you need to have one person only making them. The other to serve.

I was greeted with, "won't be long". That was fine, I was okay to wait. 1 minute later another customer arrived. I walked over to another cake window for a look and was asked what I was after by the girl still making coffee, not yet ready to serve. 30 seconds later another 2 customers arrived. After 2-3 minutes all up, we were ready to be served and the girl asks, "Who was next?". That sort of thing really annoys me as it shows a lack of care. I was clearly the only person in the shop for some time. You seriously couldn't forget could you? She'd even asked me what I wanted over 1 minute earlier, (presumably in case I was after a coffee while she was making them).

This is simply how you lose customers in what is a service industry.

Unfortunately, the lemon slice I bought tasted like sugar on a base with a barely faint hint of lemon. The éclair could use less icing as that is all you can taste and the lemon tart needs to be,...

We arrived at 2pm, shop open until 3pm but no sandwich bar (closes at 1pm we were told). Almost no hot food left in the pie warmer with still an hour of service to go. A few egg and bacon muffins in the baie marie but ,hey, the toaster is turned off at 2.00pm so any food there could only be microwaved. Ridiculous. How time consuming is it to clean a toaster? On the plus side the coffee was excellent and served in a glass (fully expecting to be told takeaway only, so that was a real plus). Very limited hot pie choice but what we could buy was delicious. And the sweet items on offer - cakes, muffins, biscuits, were all tasty. The other insane thing was we were told they had sold out of tomato sauce!! Who does that? Where is the stock control for heavens sake? Tables were clean. Staff were pretty good - it just seems the management rules are not the best for the business. Quite a number of potential customers left empty handed whilst we were there, due to there being no savoury food available. Missed opportunities...

Great little bakery who sell really nice pies!

Unfortunately the thing that lets this bakery down and stopping it from getting a 5 start rating is the service - Which always makes me think twice about coming back again...

On numerous occasions I’ve waited in a “line” to only be ignored and watch other customers who arrived after me get served first! It wouldn’t be rare if I waited 10 minutes just to buy a couple of pies.

Also my other frustration about this bakery - If you arrive after 1pm most days you will struggle to get the pie of your choice. My favourite is the chunky beef pie, but 9/10 times it’s already sold out with only mainstream options left available.

I understand that’s it’s a busy little bakery but something needs to change to improve the service and product...