Strawberry Blonde Bakery — Restaurant in Ottawa

Warning: don’t go in the store with outside drinks or food, or be prepared to be told to leave or finish them outside.

Having guests in town we decided to stroll the shops and enjoy the neighbourhood. We decided to start off further down and grabbed coffees continuing our stroll, entering and leaving many shops with our drinks (with no issues). Then we came upon Strawberry Blonde, we thought to pop in and grab something to go. We were quickly told that we were not allowed in the store with our drinks and the rest is history. Strawberry Blonde, you’ve lost my business and my guests business.

What kind of establishment, on a busy pedestrian focused neighbourhood, does this? I could understand concern had we wanted to sit down and eat in the establishment, which was not the case.

An easy fix, train your staff, fix these silly policies, and move on.

For now, you’ve lost 4 customers.

Thank you for your response, however I fail to see how our coffee drinks were going to harm anyone in your store from across the counter while also being well covered with lids. Not forgetting you also serve coffee, it seems your rebuttal is not...

I really wish I could rate this higher because it’s so nice to have a dedicated gluten-free bakery, and the fact that it’s also vegan is a great bonus. Unfortunately, the quality just isn’t there. I’ve given this place multiple chances over the years, hoping to like it, but the flavors and textures are consistently disappointing—and honestly, I feel like it’s gotten worse while the prices keep going up.

On my most recent visits, I’ve actually had to throw out several items because they were completely inedible. The Valentine’s Day hearts, for example, were coated in a chalky starch powder, and the white chocolate had an very unpleasant taste—whether the leftover starch was a mistake or not, it just wasn’t good.

Beyond the food, the customer service has always felt indifferent at best. Not rude, but never particularly warm or welcoming either.

At this point, I’ve decided I won’t be coming back. I wanted to love this place, but the quality just doesn’t justify the cost, and it’s no longer worth the disappointment.

Please put more effort into finding/creating...

Atrociously disgusting management that treats employees like expendable dogs. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, their penny pinching strategy is to fire you right before your 3 months probation so they don’t need to be responsible.

There is also blatant favouritism by the Westboro manager. The owner had allocated 25 hours of PTO to be distributed across the Westboro staff but the Westboro manager was overheard giving all the PTO to her favourite supervisor and told her to keep it a secret.

I understand supporting small businesses is important but please do NOT support this one. I don’t know about the original Kanata store but the manager at the Westboro store treats her employees extremely poorly.

There’s also another story of a girl being forced to lift very heavy equipment which damaged her shoulder severely. She had to go to the hospital and had lasting injuries. The store would not even acknowledge her injuries until lawyers had to get involved but that’s a story for another time.

TLDR; STAY CLEAR LIKE THE PLAGUE IF YOU SUPPORT...