Starbucks Paseo de Magallanes Drive−thru — Restaurant in Makati

Weekend writing Sunday late noon, March 16*

Starbucks is and will always be a third place. 😊 The Magallanes branch is one of the closest to our home. It is also highly accessible being in the Paseo De Magallanes, which is along South Superhighway. Good pitstop if you're travelling to the South!

Food - everything on the usual Starbucks menu. 😋 This is where I first bought (via their drive thru) a strawberry cake that's mostly green! (With pistachio), and where we got two bags of coffee grounds for free! (Yey to recycling, sustainability and happy plants for us.

Friendly staff - They really get to know their customers. My daughter was greeted with a HI and happy smile, as if from a bff, on her second trip to the cashier. 😉

Atmosphere - good for studying, working, zoning out, chatting... there's also like a separate area seating about 30 pax, giving us ideas of a private Starucks party! Can get noisy a bit but manageable.

Tables and seats - two floors, more seats on the second floor. Good view of the highway, too!

Parking - lots of parking outside the branch and across!

Safety - kuya guard was friendly as...

Starbucks has a branch inside the Paseo de Magallanes, accessible via SLEX Southbound before going to Skyway.

A parking fee is imposed on common areas (i.e. within the Paseo de Magallanes compound, there are lots of other establishments such as Pancake House located beside Star Bucks). Nevertheless, those parking in the parking slots intended for Starbucks customers and entering the premises will be given by a guard a pass.

This pass requires validation signature by the Starbucks crew upon exit to be entitled to two hours of free parking.

At the interior, the sofa seats are comfy, and some wooden seats are on the ground floor.

At the cashier's area, the menus are mostly coffee and fruit tea, with doughnuts and cakes inside the shelves.

On the second floor, there are partitions for group and solo table area.

The facade, when looking from outside, appears to be small, unlike those in Sierra Valley (Cainta branch), but the branch is spacious on the inside.

Starbucks Magallanes has longer operating hours even until midnight.

Drive-thru is available,...

First, the parking and drive thru entrance lane being merged into one is very disorganized, especially when the branch’s security guard didn’t have the initiative to assist all the drivers who were stuck on that lane, until several people stepped out of their cars to complain directly to him.

Second, one of us ordered an Iced Caramel Macchiato (Grande), a drink we have ordered several times from other branches already. Upon tasting the drink, our companion who ordered it got confused because she didn’t taste any coffee, and said that it tasted too much like milk.

While I understand that Starbucks has different mixes and recipes per branch, this was the first time we had an issue with how the drink was made. When we went to inform the staff and get our drink replaced, we were told that if we wanted it to be more coffee forward, we should avail of another espresso shot— which we never resorted to do considering we never had any issue with said drink until coming to...