St. Oberholz — Restaurant in Berlin

This cafe is a confusing experience, indeed. On one hand, I come here often, on the other, the service is always sub-par. While the coffee itself is great, and the layout with comfortable seating all set up for remote workers to be productive, there's a distinct lack of enjoyment or even satisfaction I receive from the actual service. I've worked in hospitality myself, not only as a bartender, barista, and cook, but also front-end till operator. Something about the way that the staff are trained (or perhaps, their lack of training) leaves a lot to be desired. My main issues are the slow service (the line at the front stacks out the door very fast due to the slowness of the till operator and the barista). It's not even that they're busy delivering orders (it's all self service pick up). It seems that there is a distinct lack of systems and communication between staff, and proactiveness to do a great job or be speedy. While everyone seems nice, they're all a little doe-eyed and not really efficient or looking like they even care about efficiency. It has me wonder whether they're underpaid, and therefore, less incentivized to show up, or whether the hiring process attracts the wrong kind of people to be working in hospitality. I honestly want to come in, re-train everyone, and uplevel their business myself because there is so much potential for this place to be epic, but right now, they're not delivering. The only great experience I had was when one woman came around and asked me to fill in a survey the other day. Her upbeat attitude and communication made me feel like someone in this business knows what hospitality means. This is why this cafe, which is great for working and has good coffee, only has 3.8 stars on google. It's customer service is letting them down big time. Management, feel free to reach out and I can give more in-depth feedback and tips for enhancing...

On paper, it looked promising — a great selection of food and a few drinks available for lunch. However, the service was unlike anything we've experienced before, and not in a good way.

We ordered two drinks and two sandwiches — nothing complex, just items that needed heating on a grill — and yet we waited 32 minutes for them to arrive. I wouldn’t usually mind a slight delay; things happen. But when we arrived, there were only six other customers, all of whom had already been served.

After waiting patiently for 25 minutes, buzzer in hand, I approached the server, who seemed completely unaware of our order. There was no apology, no effort to make up for the delay — not even a simple offer of water while we waited.

I assumed, perhaps naively, that when the food finally arrived, we’d get at least a polite apology. Instead, when we pointed out the long wait, we were met with a sarcastic smile and the line: “We’ve got a new girl working here and it’s her fault she forgot.” No accountability, no acknowledgement, just a dismissive attitude and a smirk that spoke volumes.

After a moment’s reflection on how unwelcome and rudely we’d been treated, we decided to return the food, request a refund, and go elsewhere — somewhere we were treated with basic respect and served within minutes.

Some people simply shouldn’t be in...

No idea why this location is so popular. Okay coffee for prices far above average and zero atmosphere. Staff seems bored and annoyed by having to deal with the same people (manly tourists) every day. Apart from that, the place takes up the whole pavement with the seats outside so that people actually have to dodge to the busy road.

Answer from St. Oberholz: We're sorry you had such a bad experience today. We'll talk to the bar team to make sure this doesn't happen again. As you write yourself, we have a good reputation, and tonight, we also got a 5-star rating. So we have bad and even good moments. Please revisit us to get a second impression of us.

Reply: Dear team, Thank you for your quick reply. I really appreciate you taking your customer´s requests very seriously. I hope that apart from talking to your staff you can also do something about the seating situation on the sidewalk. It is stressful for the customers and dangerous for the whole traffic situation at this corner as pedestrians leap to the bike path and bikers therefore change to the road. This is causing a lot of confusion, making accidents much more likely. Please reconsider the seating concept outside as this would not only make your customers happier. Moreover, you could help improve the road safety at this...