Impact - Café by Plastic2Beans — Restaurant in Cologne

Cute little place with a great spirit. We went for the all you can eat weekend pancake buffet.

Everyone was really friendly and the food was lovely. The coffee is excellent - as is the chai latte!

Unfortunately, however, the whole pancake set up isn't very well laid out. Despite our reservation we waited for nearly 15 minutes - and this seemed to be the case for most people we saw arrive. In my opinion, this was caused by a couple of factors:

They don't seem to have enough pancake makers, leading to unnecessary wait times when people first show up - while there were free tables to sit down at, the pancake makers were still in use elsewhere. This caused the staff to scramble when people showed up for their reservation as they had to go on the hunt for a pancake maker, extension cord and table with an accessible plug. The fact that during peek times for the pancakes they also allowed a la card ordering tables, didn't help the overall situation. Instead, it may make sense to focus on the pancake buffet on weekends (even if only in the mornings) and setting up every table with a pancake maker in advance.

The idea with the order sheets for the special ingredients is good on principle but doesn't work well for peek times such as the weekend. It takes too long and, more importantly, it takes up too much time from the front of house staff. Especially on weekends, when everyone gets the same choices anyway, this could be made easier for both staff and guests by setting small, pre-prepared plates of the condiments on the buffet.

While cutlery is set out at the buffet for grabs, plates weren't laid out at the table or provided at the buffet. We waited another 15 minutes before managing to flag down a member of staff to get plates an start our meal. A small stack of plates on the buffet would have solved this problem easily.

So in short: it seems crucial to free up time for the staff members to manage reservations, keep the buffet and tables tidy as well as take drinks orders because as it stands now all those steps take too long and fall a bit to the way side.

While we liked our pancakes and the spirit of the café, unfortunately the overall atmosphere didn't make it the best experience. We won't come back for the pancake buffet but will give it another try for cake and...

We went to the All You Can Eat Pancakes brunch and unfortunately, the experience was disappointing. Our reservation was at 12:45, three of us arrived on time and the other two just five minutes later. Still, it took exactly one hour from the moment we arrived until we were able to eat the first pancakes.

During that time, we saw several tables that arrived after us being served before us. When we asked what was going on, we were told it was self-service, something that was never explained to us when we arrived, which caused a lot of confusion and wasted time.

Anyways, the buffet was practically useless because we hadn’t received plates or anything we needed to actually serve ourselves. Some of the essential items to prepare the pancakes weren’t even available at the table, and we had to ask for plates and other things. It really didn’t feel organized at all.

When we finally started eating, our drinks still hadn’t arrived. We had to go and speak to the staff about the situation, especially considering the experience has a 2 hour limit and we had already lost half of it just waiting.

One of the staff members was very kind and apologized several times. He also gave us a discount, which we appreciated. However, the overall experience still didn’t match the price. For example, the toppings plate is the same size whether you are two or five people, which really doesn’t make sense. When we asked for a second round, they even brought the wrong toppings.

In the end, we left disappointed. The real price is €26 per person, and honestly, it’s overpriced for what they offer. I wouldn’t return to the restaurant, at least not for the All You Can Eat...

So many things went so wrong at this cafe, it was my worst experience by far at any cafe in Cologne. So we were a group of six, sitting outside. After we sat there we had to wait for a long time and no one attended us until one of my friends went in and asked to order. Then we ordered coffee, and after exactly an HOUR i went in to check about the order and the guy there at the counter was very weird, when i asked him about the order he wasn’t even looking me in the eye or listening to me, he was just looking away and telling me ‘okay okay’ and another guy said he would come to our table in a min. Then this guy comes to us and asks us for our order! After all this time and already ordering, he was asking us to order again. And then we did, and in another 15 min finally got our coffee. The vibe here felt so wrong and so negative, it was almost like they didn’t want to serve us or something. However, when i was paying i told the guy it wasn’t nice to wait that long and he said they were short staffed ( but there were like 4-5 staff and not may customers) Anyhow i’m sorry for the experience we had here. And good luck...