Maruyama Coffee — Restaurant in Karuizawa

Make no mistake, the coffee is great , so do the food. The poor performance goes to the caotic service , poor attendance to customer and lack of compassion towards cafe busienss. As a store carrying such good brand and representing high standard towards boutique cafeteria, the service of this shop is unacceptable :

1. Process of receiving customer , no proper followup towards long waiting q. (30 min turns to 40 min''. 2)Reception rejected me when I wait in the q and notify her I will take a seat but need one cup of take away while waiting
2. uncleaned up table remains dirty for over 15mins even though there are ~7 staff attending less than 20 tabels
3. each staff seems not clear on r&r and standard of service, plus lack of communication with each other. When I raise concern after being seated for 40 mins with only one small glass of water served with 15 mins waiting, the waiter didn't even talk to kitchen staff to accelerate or check order status
4. very unprofessional about coffee, the guy taking order is not familiar with "today taste special" coffee menu and have to come back and forth to check what we ordered
5. we arrived at 9:15 and 5of us had simple coffee, cocoa toast ,hot dog and left nearly 11:00 !!!! Q for table 40 mins , waiting for food 45mins and...

They pride themselves on sourcing coffee by themselves but their coffee is not good. I tried both the french press coffee and their usual drip coffee but both the taste and after taste were not very good. The usual blend coffee at Sawamura just a few meters away is much better. Most customers are confused by the fact that white tables are for takeouts and wooden tables for seated service but instead of being flexible and nice to their customers, everyone is scolded. I tried the morning set today but the quality of ingredients, toast, jam, yoghurt, is subpar. If this was priced at 500 yen, I would not say anything but at 1400 yen, it is not worth it at all. Staff is robotic and uninterested (our waiter forgot the spoons, came back but without the spoons and managed it on his third attempt), here too a huge difference with Sawamura. Although they insist on serving you at the table, you still have to queue up with everyone to pay. Staff seem utterly confused about what they should be doing. On their website, the founder prides himself on sourcing coffee but this place is not...

Ordered a fruit blend coffee, summer limited juice and a chestnut mont blanc.

They are all amazing!!!

I actually not a fan of pure black coffee but I love theirs, and for first time I don’t need to add milk to smooth out the bitterness because it just tastes so good as it’s original flavor.

And the juice was well made and you can feel the freshness of it, which feels like a nice breeze for hot summer.

And the chestnut mont blanc was very well made that it tastes extremely well with the black coffee, the cake is very rich and smooth like eating a chestnut pudding 🥰

I regret forgot to buy some coffee as my own お土産 and will definitely visit again.

Also, the staff are very nice and welcoming, if they realize you are not familiar with Japanese they will kindly explain in English as best as they can to help you make...