M&S Coffee Shop — Restaurant in Blaby

M&s Cafe receives a downgrade... A missed opportunity*

Superficially the revamped store looks great, more seats and tables and window with a lovely view of the car park.

The car park is where you will be quickly heading after you realise the real changes that have taken place.

The menu has been slashed removing all cooked dishes, such as the fish and chips, full English breakfast and crusty hot breaded chicken bap, all gone.

You are now left with an option of cold baps in plastic on the shelf to grab and go, or soup.

Really grab an go is the phrase, in the past you could easily sit be served a large dish meal of restaurant standards or at least garden center standards but now the emphasis is on getting you in and getting you out as quickly as possible with as little waiting time as possible. I interviewed the duty manager of the cafe at the time and he explained that people were waiting a long time to be served. I was left confused. If a business is doing well you don't hobble it by removing the kitchen, and remove all the unique selling points that made you bother to go to M&s over the competition in the food hall. If I was in charge I would have increased the table capacity from 150 seats to 300. The customer capacity could easily have handled more customers. And this effective downgrade happens at the same day that the M&s store in Leicester City centre has been closed down for good???

These changes and lack of sensitivity, and clear profit first, customer last mentality are a sad sign of the times, a post covid mentality of poor service at highway robbery prices. £5.00 for a cold bacon bap with only 1 rasher and no butter in the roll?. We walked through the shiny new but sadly lacking cafe and went to chaiwalla, greggs and Costa. This new cafe is little more than a poor man's pretamanger. This is not just downgrade, it's an M&s...

I visited the new M & S cafe at Fosse Park yesterday and I was soooo disappointed. Having waited for their cafe to re-open for about 5 weeks I was so excited. The lovely ladies from the old cafe had told me that, being at the front of the shop with windows , it would be much lighter and brighter - quite the reverse, I thought it was quite dismal inside and definately not lighter. I had my granddaughter with me who was so upset that she could no longer have her favourite children's meals - spaghetti bolognaise, pizza, in fact, I don't think they did any warm food, such as baked potatoes etc. The high counter was just an accident waiting to happen - I was very pleased I only had 2 hot drinks to lift down - my mother-in-law's and mine. The toasted sandwich I purchased is no longer brought to the table, instead, once you've paid you have to stand to the side to wait for it (there's hardly enough space for that). The Americano coffee is no longer supplied with a little jug of milk, instead you take your tray to another area where there are two insulated jugs on a small surface. My coffee was too full to add milk and there were no facilities to tip a little away - by the time I had finished there were other people also waiting for the jugs. This was definitely not a pleasant experience and certainly not relaxing - three ladies on the table next to ours described the cafe like a service station cafe, which was quite accurate really - what a shame to ruin something...

We’ll done for completely ruining your own cafe. You clearly have no idea of your customer base,especially with uncomfortable bistro style seating and pre made rolls. Seems your trying very hard to be more like Greggs. If you want rubbish pre made food go to Greggs or McDonald’s as it’s an awful lot cheaper. Won’t be returning as it’s so paired back it genuinely feels like they are trying to drive away their customers. MS have never been a hip young brand and never will be, so embrace the oldies. After all they do have the disposable income everyone talks...