The Alley Hub — Restaurant in Richmond Hill

The drinks are beautiful, but on the sweet side, and the cups are very small, thus not very good value for the price. Also on the sweet side. I asked them to reduce the sweetness, but the drinks I ordered were not adjustable.

Furthermore, we went specifically to The Alley to pick up some animé stickers that my children wanted. There was a promotion that some of the drinks come with stickers. But after we ordered our drinks, and they were handed to us, we got no stickers. So when we asked for them, we were told that they were out of the stickers. Well, that was just very disappointing.

The biggest negative of my experience was the straws. They are made from a hard brittle plastic! The first straw package I opened had a long crack along the side. So I threw it away and opened another straw. That straw begin to disintegrate as I was halfway through my drink! I did not know what it was that I was sucking up through my straw. I just felt these small hard flat pieces on my tongue. I thought they were maybe from the plastic from the lid since I had to puncture it to get the straw through. But these are hard pieces and I was spitting them out, having had no idea what it was.

Upon further examination, I discovered they were pieces of the straw! As you can see from the photos, it was really breaking up and getting into my drink. This is very bad, as I could’ve swallowed some of the pieces and injured my throat or worse. When compared to an intact straw, you can see how much of it had broken off onto my drink.

Order your straws from a new straw supplier!! One day, one of your customers will choke, or have a badly injured oesophagus or airway. Better yet, use paper straws.

Also, maybe they should give an IOU for the missing stickers, since it was, after all part of their promotion that brought us into their store to...

I enjoyed the very fresh salad served here and the salted caramel macchiato coffee, made with oat milk. This place doesn't have much to offer in terms of food options at this time, so I hope the menu is something they can expand on in the near future. The staff was very kind and hospitable, and in light of some other negative reviews for this cafe, it appears they are truly making an effort to appease customers and leave them with a good experience all around. I would come back here again - the atmosphere is a pleasant one to work in, and the seating is comfortable. Thank you!

UPDATE: I originally gave a 5 star review but I have returned a few times since and I am really put off by their lack of flexibility when it comes to using other non-dairy alternatives in the milk tea options - with no logical explanation as to why. They do have oat milk, which they will use when making coffee drinks, but they will not swap out the soy milk for the oat milk in their tea drinks. This is absurd and makes no sense from a business perspective, especially since companies as rigid as Tim Horton’s once were now offer oat milk as an option, for all their drinks. The only reason that was given for not being able to accommodate my dietary need was that it simply didn’t taste as good with another type of milk. I’m sorry but that is simply not good enough as an excuse and only exemplifies your priority to maintain some kind of status rather than put your customers first. As someone with an intolerance to soy, I will gladly choose oat milk and even prefer the taste of it over soy. It has been very frustrating and insulting to...

First time visit everything was great, I ordered the black sesame latte and they had made it really good.

But second visit, complete different experience.. in a negative way… I ordered the same drink as I did the first time and I remember the workers who were there the first time as they were there again. The drink was made so bad, EXTREMELY sweet!🤮 I asked one of the guys working there (I assumed he was the manager?) if he could fix my drink because it was so sweet. He just replied ‘ that’s just the way the drink is made with that ingredient’ He tried to dilute the drink with some water to make it less sweet as I asked him to do something to reduce the sweetness.

Unfortunately that didn’t work. So I asked if he could scrape off the foam from the top of the drink and he also said he couldn’t do that either!? ….Seriously?!…😠😡 I wasn’t even asking them to re-make my drink, just take off some foam as that was the problem and barely drinkable because it was so sweet, but they couldn’t even do that.. Wasted my money on a horrible drink they messed up on.

Very disappointed in their customer service especially when are brand new too. They deny their customers to fix a problem when there is an issue with their product. The drink sucked and their customer service sucks. No consistency in making their drinks and rejects customers to make...