Alfresco Cafe Moruya — Restaurant in Moruya

For almost five years, we’ve always grabbed a coffee and beans from Alfresco whenever we’ve been in Moruya. At other times, I’ve ordered beans for delivery, and their coffee has consistently been our favourite at home.

Unfortunately, that changed this year. We purchased a bag of beans from the café, and when we finally opened and brewed it, the coffee tasted like cardboard. On checking the bag, I noticed there was no batch date or barcode, which I found very disappointing.

Yes, I did open the bag 17 weeks after purchase, but that has never been an issue before. This made me wonder if the beans on the shelf were already old when we bought them.

I contacted Alfresco via Facebook Messenger, but their response was far from customer-friendly. Instead of listening, they dismissed my concerns and blamed me for storing the beans incorrectly. For the record, they were kept at the bottom of a cool pantry on a slate floor — hardly poor storage conditions. I was told the beans should be consumed within 4–8 weeks of roasting. Fair enough, but how is a customer supposed to know when they were roasted if there’s no roast date on the packaging?

It’s a real shame. This is a small business that relies heavily on locals and tourists, and while their café coffee is good, they’ve clearly dropped the ball on selling beans. Sadly, they’ve lost my business. I may still grab a coffee when passing through, but for beans at home, I’ll now go with White Horse Coffee — who not only roast excellent beans but also batch date and barcode their product properly.

Bad luck, Alfresco.

*Response to Alfresco's comment:

This company still missed my point about not having a roasting date on their beans. The consumer is not a mind reader, the consumer from this business assumes they are getting the freshest beans possible. On this occasion I am doubting this was the case. Beware purchasing beans from Alfresco, they do not put a date of roasting on their bags. There are a lot of small businesses roasting excellent award winning coffee in NSW and Australia. Alfresco does not make any...

Clearly the town of Moruya doesn’t have a food safety officer who visits their cafes. This cafe thinks it’s ok to have food sitting in a non-heated stand and when it’s ordered, it is only lightly toasted. This cafe opens at 6:30am and served us 2 (one had been already returned) cold on the inside pastries at 11:30am… you do the math. With one of their staffs efforts to amend this, I had to remind them of another pastry I had ordered as the staff member didn’t get my order correct. The staff member also didn’t know what was in their ‘veggie pastie’ I.e. curried? Coffee better then average but let down in many...

I have an account with them. Placed an order every 2 weeks for the past 14months. Sorry but their service is absolutely disgusting. Troy the owner is rude , booked him in + placed an order 3 weeks in advance to teach my new barista the machine plus service it. No show, no order. Rang promised courier to bring coffee. No service cause Troy doesn't have time. Still no coffee. Troy doesn't care at all. Dreadful service. Definitely going to find another supplier. Thanks...