Roca Cafe Pink — Restaurant in Sydney

Edit after the cafe owner’s reply: thanks for the acknowledgement. There is no need for any refund as I only paid slightly more than the discounted price = $30. I added one more star ⭐️ due to your response. I normally do not give any harsh review at all as I fully understood that it’s not easy to run businesses. However the situation was really making the customers look bad with no reason. In all, we did enjoy the food and coffees. Thank you.

——————————————— I must say - the food and coffee were above average. The portion of the kids pancake was small but I can see it was so fluffy and my child loved it.

However - that’s all for the good side.

I came in with the expectation to utilise nrma membership discount so I ordered up to $38 for 2 ppl. There was no sign indicating - nrma discount cannot be applied during this period of time.

When I was paying for my bill- the lady said that manager wasn’t here and she could not apply any discount to my bill. She showed me on her screen & demonstrated how she could not apply 20% discount on my bill though the discount should even be 25% off total bill. I said you could ring your manager - and she said she has been on holiday. I stood by my right as I really would order differently (like below $25) if I knew I could not utilise the 25% off discount.

The standstill remained for 10 mins.

It really left a sour taste to me as a customer who fully knew my rights. It made me look bad that I seemed not wanting to pay for my meals/ orders. My child could also feel embarrassed. However I would not be backing off / paying more for the cafe/ lady’s incompetence or management problems.

The cafe can do so many things to avoid the above situation:

putting up a sign: no nrma discount allowed asking customers to pay before you sit down (then I would instantly order differently knowing about no discount) taking off your cafe from the nrma web site asking me to pay in full first then write down something on the receipt and assured me that the manager would refund me the discount amount when she is back from holiday

I must say: the experience for me and my child was so bad at the end. Not that I could not afford to pay and I don’t mean to sound harsh - this is the worst thing to do to a customer for a business - BLAME customers for the business’ incompetence, instead of solving their own problems. All issues identified were their own problems but no apology/ nobody was thinking in the customer’s shoes.

The situation wasn’t that hard to handle. Unlikely I will return in any situation. Others - be warned - they do not honour any sort of discount when manager’s away. (I assume this must be true) Be prepared to pay for full price...

Two (2) weeks ago I wrote a review about the terrible service that we received at breakfast.

There were two (2) of us dining in the cafe with no other patrons in the cafe..

When we arrived we were thrown a disk on the table and told by the Waitress to ‘enter your own order in the system’ ourselves !!!

We asked the Waitress if she could place the order in the system for us which she reluctantly did. She then went to the corner of the cafe and spoke to another Waitress for half an hour.

THERE WAS NO OTHER PATRONS IN THE CAFE !!!

As the new Owner we spoke to you about the service and about our concerns and you were extremely arrogant, rude and dismissive to both of us.

I note your reply to my review and it highlights your arrogance and rudeness to your Patrons.

Your response is incorrect and extremely rude.

You mentioned that you reviewed the experience on the cameras in the store. If you had in fact done that you would have seen the two (2) Waitresses in the corner of the cafe talking to each other for half an hour.

I was not dining alone - we were both disgusted about the service and your arrogate and aggressive response when we tried to discuss the matter with you.

I stand by my review and give the new Owner five thumbs down.

You have destroyed what used to be a lovely cafe.

All of the ‘regular’ patrons now meet up at a different coffee shop in the area.

YOU ARE...

We made a large-group booking of 30 people for an event at Roca Cafe Pink, and we were very disappointed with the service. We arrived at the time of our booking and noticed the staff had not set up our table yet and other customers were still eating their meals inside. The staff had no urgency to accommodate us, we had to prompt the staff a few times before they started moving people out and organising our tables and chairs for the booking. I was so embarrassed I felt the need to apologise to the other customers for disrupting their meal. Even though the cafe knew we had 30 people coming, they didn’t have the tables and chairs ready and had to bring them from out the back, which took some time and so we had to make our guests wait outside as we set up the tables. The staff also seemed annoyed at the inconvenience, which is bizarre because the cafe approved our booking and said they could accommodate us.

Thankfully, we were very happy with the food and the ability for the cafe to split the bill. However, some of the meals were incorrect and it took sometime to get everyone’s orders.

I just wanted to provide my feedback to help the manager, because the cafe has such great potential to be a lovely event space. The interior is beautiful and the food is great. But perhaps more training for the staff is needed to help them be...