Little Sister Cafe — Restaurant in Melbourne

A café where you get served by rude, aggressive and ingenuine staff who ask “How are you?” when they really don’t care how you are at all. Trying to get served by any of them is quite a challenge. They mostly just stand around the front counter and have swear-filled conversations where they complain about work rosters, other staff members, and most disturbingly, the customers. Clearly they don’t realize that people can actually hear them. Or they do realize and simply don’t care. If you’re after a very cold, false and unwelcoming reception with extremely poor service and rather average food, this is the café for you.

Update: 22 Oct 2022

We tried this café again this morning to see if there has been any improvement to their customer service skills. We took a seat and waited for someone to serve us. While we waited there were two girls behind the counter who made eye contact with us several times while making coffee, yet failed to acknowledge us or bring over a menu. Meanwhile another girl was busy setting up the tables outside, and saw us sitting at the table through the windows, but didn’t bother to come inside to serve us. We ended up walking out after 10 minutes of waiting, and as we left one of the girls behind the counter saw us walking out, but said nothing. She didn’t really seem that concerned about losing customers. It’s really baffling as to how this café stays in business with such disgusting and highly unprofessional service. Maybe it’s time to employ people with a higher level of maturity who can conduct themselves with a little more tact and decorum?

There is another café called The East Pantry literally 10 metres away from Little Sister Café. It has much better customer service and...

Today was the WORST experience I’ve ever had at a cafe. We were seated in the back courtyard (in direct line of sight through the whole cafe). The woman who sat us down said she would be back in a couple of minutes to take our order. We waited half an hour and no one came to take our order. One staff member went out the courtyard to the back storage room but ignored us. We caught the eye of two other staff members who also ignored us. The woman who initially sat us down never came back to take our order. So we were ignored by 4 people at this cafe. If we wanted to be ignored and not eat, we would have stayed at home. After 30 minutes passed, we decided to leave. As we walked towards the door, the initial woman caught our eye and my partner said no one came to take our order. She ignored us AGAIN and didn’t say anything to us, instead she looked away. One of the other staff members told us to enjoy the rest of our day — after leaving this cafe, we sure did! But not because we had a good meal or service here. Instead we walked across the road to The East Pantry where we had amazing service with friendly and attentive staff and great food. If you find yourself walking into this cafe, I recommend you walk straight back out and take your hard earned cash where it’s actually valued. Would have given 0 stars if I could. Wish I’d looked at reviews before we came because it seems many others have had similar issues with being ignored...

Have come here a few times over the years, and for the most part it's been good, although a bit pricey and slow with service. A few weeks ago on a Sunday, we ordered a banana smoothie, that took up to 15-20 minutes to make. I can understand that sometimes orders take time if there aren't enough staff or too many orders that overwhelm the system, but at the time it was pretty quiet.

The staffer at the front of house took forever to make our smoothie and just seemed very bad at time management, as well as a bit abrupt and rude. The unblended smoothie was sitting on the bench for over 5 minutes while she kind of lolly gagged around and argued/challenged other staff about another pick up order that had just come through regarding a museli cup. She then blended the smoothie once she remembered to and on the blender it sat for another 5-ish minutes. Eventually, she got around to finishing the smoothie, with what seemed like a begrudging and hollow apology. I regret not complaining on the day, but after sitting on it and driving past yesterday, I was compelled to write this review. I won't be coming back...