JCO Donuts & Coffee, SM CDO Uptown Northwing — Restaurant in Cagayan de Oro

This donut shop appears to be the larger and more refined interior design wise compared to it's sister shop at Centrio. It is about 3 or four times larger with twice as many tables and chairs and a row of seats akin to a terminal - making the shop look like a luxury airport. It has the same popular donuts as the Centrio branch does and sold at the same price. This place often gets crowded much like the Centrio branch. It's is true, jco is renown for its soft and delicious donut which comes in dozens of flavor and a couple of sizes which can be sold for much cheaper price if sold in volumes - the more you buy, the cheaper each donut in the bunch order gets. My concern was that the shop seems lacking in some areas. The staff are often showing being overwhelmed, become panicked, and lose focus such as missing orders, bumping to each other or even ignore consumers when things get too busy. Unfortunately, the shop is often busy as these jco donuts are very popular and affordable. The second concern was that the shop may not have all donuts all the time (as they are sold too quickly for the bakers to bake) and the other foods and drinks are not available despite being advertised. I got the firsthand experience of requesting for yogurt after lining up for 10 minutes only to be told that the yogurt is not available (which I had no way of knowing as there was no notice anywhere that the yogurt was not available for the moment). Edit: I ordered yogurt for take out but the staff asked me for the flavour which confuses me so I asked them what flavours are available. The staff replied that the flavours available are "Oreo" and "Oreo cheesecake". I chose "Oreo" flavour and I got an Oreo frappe instead. It turns out the flavours available for yogurt are strawberry and blueberries which both are not available and I was not...

Here's my presonal review of JCo SM Uptown

Location: 5/5 Food and Drinks: 4/5 Atmosphere: 4/5 Cleanliness: 5/5 Service: 3/5 Price: 4/5

Overall Feedback:

The Location Great location being in SM Uptown CDO Northwing. Very accessible to customers.

The Space They have a good space and mix different but cohesive tables and chairs. They are packed during peak hours and the line can be long.

The Food and Drinks I have visited the branch multiple times even during its first week of opening. Both dine in and donut boxes to go.

Donuts are great as always and they have good selection. The coffee comes with free glazed donut so take note if you don't want to order too much donuts. The coffee is decent and not memorable.

The Service The staffs are very corteous although when you're next on queue, it takes time to attend to you as they all seem to be very busy, confused and overwhelmed. The service takes too long especially for coffee. The donuts that they've already assembled upon ordering takes time to get to cashier to call you for payment. I've visited mulyiple times during peak and non peak hours and it's almost the same.

Value for Money Donuts are good value for money! The coffee is a bit expensive for the taste especially if they are competing with local cafes that offer the same or even better coffees.

Do I recommend this place? Yes, I think this is still a good place for coffee and meet up with friends especially for people...

Management should train their staff not to engage in senseless yapping while they are working. Drinks were waiting at the counter and no one was getting their order/s called. A few of us followed up with them because it's taking them so long to finish our orders. What's even worse is two of the off duty staff even noticed us looking at them but they paid us no heed, instead continued yapping with the staff on duty.

It's fine to engage in small talk as long as it's not getting in the way of serving your customers.

Won't be coming back anytime soon because of the poor service. It wasn't even peak hours during my visit as there quite a lot of vacant seats. The cause of the delay comes mainly from the unnecessary yapping...