Afterthoughts — Restaurant in Abbotsford

I ordered a cake online late at night and realized after I had selected the incorrect date for pickup. My bad fam. I called immediately the next morning and spoke to a very nice lady, explained my error and asked if the order could be deferred exactly one week for the pickup date. Since the order was placed so far in advance of the original pickup date she said "it's no problem at all". When I asked if she needed my order number or anything to write down with the details she said "no" and that she had my name and would look it up in the system. Order placed on a Tuesday late, called Wednesday morning super early before the place even opened to defer the Friday pickup time, wonderful experience at the time and she was very very nice. I assume she was a baker. I guess however it slipped her mind or the message didn't get passed along. Things happen and I am sure the baker just got busy and I wouldn't normally complain about having too much cheesecake in my life. Although I do need to fork out more dough for another cake for the right day now so that sucks because this one was pricey, but again, she didn't mess up my kidney transplant.

Saturday comes around. I receive a phone call from a scary woman who angrily demanded to know why I hadn't pickup up the cake the day before. I explained that I had called and spoken to someone at the beginning of the week, and they had informed the order was deferred as discussed. The disgruntled woman on the phone snapped at me for not being able to hear even though she called me and chose to do so in a loud space which I found an odd thing to do since I could not make her go somewhere appropriate to place her outgoing scathing phone call. She said she would need to "talk to the owner" to see if anything could be done. She provided zero remedy or even hope of one. Since they already had my nearly $100 and she gave me no hope that anything would be done about their error, we dropped everything and met the scary lady's demands and picked up the order to avoid being out the money. When I arrived to pick up, her demeanour was the same, very scary. The other two girls working looked terrified of her too. They were lovely and should find a better job to escape the scary lady. Get out of there ladies it won't get better! I asked one of them for contact info to follow up because if this were my business I would want to know someone is scaring off my customers but they had to ask the scary lady herself and I shared with her that whoever had called me had a terrible attitude. She immediately became aggressive and identified herself as the caller so I shared the same feedback with her directly about her attitude. She initially blamed it on not being able to hear but we could speak just fine in person and she presented exactly the same, miserable and angry and completely unwilling to help. In hindsight I should have offered her some cheesecake to cheer her up since I now had ten pounds more than anyone could possibly eat because the event wasn't for another week and now I had a megaton of it. I asked for follow up but after perusing other reviews and seeing responses from the owner I am not surprised they did not reach out as they do not seem to care. Many other excellent bakeries around, go somewhere else and avoid the scary lady and poor...

I went in a couple years ago for the first time. My partner and I got a few different items to go as it was our first time there and we wanted to try a few things. My partner nor I enjoyed any of them. We tried two kinds of cheesecake and a dessert-in-a-cup.

Fast forward to Feb 28th of 2025 and we headed back again. I believe in second chances. We got there and the line-up situation was just as confusing and poorly laid out as last time. You can't see what's available if anyone is in front of you. They should have the dessert options available posted on a sign beside the line-up area. This would allow people to ponder and possibly decide what they'd like to get before getting to the front of the line. Standing there trying to decide while feeling rushed due to a line-up behind me was not a nice feeling. I felt like a potential pain in the neck to the patrons behind me and therefore rushed my choices.

We tried a few different items this time, like we did previously. We got carrot cake and two pieces of cheesecake.

As the staff member was grabbing our carrot cake, her bare fingers almost touched the slice. (My partner and I both have auto-immune disease so I'm very vigilant about germs and contamination.) She then stopped and took the entire tray out to rest it on the counter to try retrieving our slice again. The slices are wrapped in paper sheets that hug each side of the slice and gripping the paper sheets were how the slice was retrieved instead of with a utensil. So, whatever contaminants were on her hand went onto that paper sheet and into our to-go container! In my humble opinion, if they are going to use the paper as a barrier between their hands and the food, then the paper slices should be removed from the cake before it is placed in the to-go container.

Then we moved to the right to ring through our order. The lady that rang us through was in a crust and was all kinds of fake-nice. I felt like I was being silently judged based on her demeanor and tone. After we left, I mentioned it to my partner, wondering if maybe I was just being overly sensitive and he confirmed that he too felt the peculiar judge-y vibes coming off her. I know the issue wasn't me because I was polite and asked her how her day was while our order was rang through. I do my best to be polite to staff in the hospitality and service industries because I know it's a hard and often thankless job. I hope whatever had her struggling is behind her now.

Regarding the quality of the items we purchased:

The carrot cake tasted 100% commercial. It lacked any soul and was mostly weird frosting and had walnut pieces woven throughout the whole thing. The texture threw me off because I wasn't expecting it to have nuts in the entire thing. I love nuts but like to know ahead if something has a ton of them.

The strawberry cheesecake tastes like air. No strawberry taste at all. It was the most tasteless piece of cheesecake I've ever had.

The choco pb cheesecake was decent. It was the best out of the three items.

The interior is cozy and I appreciate their later hours and the vast selection.

We are not planning...

Afterthoughts of going to this place:

I thought that the new Afterthoughts was going to be different than the one from the older location. Although the setting's changed the atmosphere remains the same. The process of choosing a dessert/drink and then paying for it is ridiculous. Staff doesn't communicate with one another and the cashier is often confused as to what was ordered. On top of that, staff is really rude when talking to customers. I'm not the first to say this, and you can go through all of the reviews and see the common trend. No recommendations or communication, hi's/hello's. It's just frustrated looks and trying to get you out of the line. And that's true even when there's two people in the line.

Food/Drink:

The dessert options are not worth the price point. You can literally go down the road to Superstore and buy a cheescake for half of the price and with better options. Don't get me wrong, if you like to pay for overpriced deserts lacking in flavour to the point that you have to purchase whip cream on the side to mask the sameness of their deserts, then boy this place is for you. Drinks are kind of meh. Again, it's overpriced for what you get. Purchased a regular hot chocolate and marble hot chocolate. Tasted like milk with super sweet syrup dropped in it. Tea's and coffee's are the same deal. Bland, and not worth the price point.

Decor and Service:

I don't mind this. The new location has this going for it. Open tables to student's and people that like to study, and tables and booths for those in groups. Washoom's are maintained. So good job Afterthoughts, you have that going for you. But then you fail at...... SERVICE. I don't have much more to say other than what I wrote above. My only other gripe is that when you go to pay, they do not have the option to pay via tap. Now that might sound a bit silly. But it really isn't. Some customers do not carry cash and card all the time. I usually pay via Google Tap or even tap via a credit card. Sure, I don't expect them to have NFC payments from phones ready to go, but no tap on cards is a bit inconvenient. Nitpicking, but I'm not the first to have this issue and not the last.

Conclusion:

I've been to this place a few times. The old location and the new. I've tried different food and drink items. And suffice to say, they're really, really not good. I can't justify coming to a place like Afterthoughts only to receive the worst service I have received from a simple bakery/drink shop in Abbotsford. I can't justify paying a lot for below average desserts and drinks. There are more options in Abbotsford, and I'm ok with going to them as Afterthoughts has missed the mark every time I...