Now & Then Cafe kew — Restaurant in Melbourne

The best vanilla slice I have eaten in my life. Only found at Now and Then cafe. The staff are very helpful and pleasant on 17/8. I have become a regular at that cafe. My friend Christine loves the vanilla slice too. Decor at the cafe is so gorgeous. Light and breezy colours and beautiful paintings on the wall. Went again on 26/8 with 2 friends. The lovely staff who normally serve me were not working yesterday. Although the vanilla slice maintained its excellent quality the service on 26/8 was abysmal bordering on horrible. Firstly the woman who served me wanted immediate payment before they serve the cakes. That's ok by me but I want a receipt for proof of my payment. She took forever getting the receipt and even had to add my friend's payment on the receipt. That's shoddy as he paid by card and was not interested in obtaining a receipt. To make matters worse, she handed the 2 plates of cakes to my friend wanting him to carry them to the table from the counter. What sort of service is this?? Never in my life have waitresses at cafes demand myself or other customers carry their plates of cakes to their table. Their job is to serve customers and carry the plates to the table. This is highly unacceptable. Despite the cakes being excellent and we being local, my friends and I won't be back due to the abysmal customer service we received on 26/8. Noticed lately that rude waitress hasn't worked at the cafe lately and there are no vanilla slices lately so...

If you’re going to open on New Years Day, get it right. This was terrible from start to finish. Told to sit ‘over there somewhere’, no water to the table and at least the lady who took our order after 10 mins was very friendly. That’s where the good stuff ended. Our order was 2 burgers, 1 juice and a coffee. Meals took 40 mins to come out and were presented terribly. Soggy buns and tasteless burgers. Lettuce all over the plate and bacon not cooked properly. The fries were oily and cooked within an inch of their lives. After painstakingly getting through some of the food, the drinks after an hour still had not arrived. After asking twice, they finally arrived. By this time, we were over it, feeling sick from the average food and wanted to get out of there. Oh, and did I mention the 15% public holiday surcharge!!

Then on checkout, they didn’t even have our order in the system. We politely advised what we had and paid. For such a great setting, the service and food are sub standard. Also, a young guy who works there came in to start his shift and started tying his long greasy hair up in front of all of the customers and didn’t wash his hands and started handing meals.

Tip for Now & Then: get some leadership on the floor and in the kitchen. 2 stars was...

Such bad experience. We called two days ago to order sandwiches for a party down the road, the staff didn’t even take any details until my husband asked if they’d need our details for pick up. Staff said it should be fine.

Came to pick up the sandwiches today at 10am as discussed. The staff told us that someone else had already came to pick up the order (very unlikely) so we have to wait another 30 minutes for the sandwiches to be done.

The order wasn’t ready till more than an hour after and their excuse now is that they checked their phone log and nobody called to put in the order.

Charged us $$$ for vegetarian and chicken sandwiches which is ridiculous especially after that whole experience. Stop lying and making excuses for something that is clearly your mistake. We should have not paid that much for such a poor customer service.

Update: My husband has the phone logs to prove that we called your cafe and spoke to a female staff who said she don't need to take any details from us and "it should be fine". We knew it was odd that no one took any deposit which is why we asked more than once. Giving us two different excuses just shows that you knew there was a mistake made. Being honest to us in the first place would be the professional...