Douwe Egberts Café — Restaurant in Groningen

Until this week, I would have given a 5* review. However, they just instituted a dumb new policy, called DE Office. Basically, if you want to come to work or study, you pay an extra €1,80/hr for the privilege. Each hour you get a stamp, after 8hr or 10hr (haven't confirmed which) you get a free coffee (so for €14+ spend).

I understand that some bad customers ruin it for everyone, ordering only a single coffee or tea then sitting there 5hr taking up 4 seats. But this also penalises legitimate customers, for example if I come to work for 5 hours I'm probably ordering 3 coffees, some cake, and maybe a toastie too, so probably spending around €30+. Having to pay another €10 on top for use of the chair because I'm working is kind of an insult. If you wanted to sit and chat with a friend for 5hr, they won't be charging you this.

It's a shame, because the girls who work here are mostly lovely (I feel sorry for them having to explain this new policy to disgruntled customers), the coffee is of a good quality, the carrot cake, mustard soup and toasties are tasty, and importantly for me, it's the only café open until 10pm (I like to work in the evenings). I guess it's back to the library for me, and it feels like a lose-lose situation for all involved.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was implemented differently, e.g. every euro spent on a time card could be used towards the value of food or drink; this could still be effective because if someone is just coming to work here for the atmosphere rather than the coffee, then they're either going to pay for the time or go elsewhere (and the cost price of serving coffee is not that high anyway), while people like myself who also buy products could then convert the time cost to additional products, even if that's a bit of a hassle.

My bet is that this policy will kill off most of their afternoon and evening business that came from people like me, and that they'll just be busy at late morning and lunchtimes now with standard lunchtime...

After a nice sunny day in the city I decided it was time for a delicious espresso. This is when I stumbled upon Douwe Egberts Café, nice decor and it seemed like a great place to enjoy my favorite brew.

Unfortunately the espresso itself was, let’s put it mildly, sub-optimal. First of all it came served in a cappuccino cup which seemed odd for an espresso and there was no noticeable crema, it had the watery consistency of filter coffee that further fueled my intense disappointment in the lack of espresso in this cappuccino cup, which was sold to me as an espresso…

Coffee...

The coffee is good but I can't say the same about the food. The iced coffees are comparable, if not better than typical starbucks coffees. The food unfortunately does not seem to be fresh. They were out of the vegetarian omelets so we had the toast. But the egg on the toast looked like plastic. Shiny and shaped in a perfect circle. The pancakes.... the same story. Almost like they were removed from their packaging and warmed up in a microwave. Than it would make more sense why the vegetarian omelet was not available anymore, but the salmon...