Stanley's Bar & coffee lounge — Restaurant in Dover

Long story is don't come to this coffee shop to do work.

I'll start by saying I thought the coffee and tea I got there was great. Stopped into Dover for a night and the next morning had a train to catch at 11. Came by here early planning to stay for a couple of hours and do some work. Ordered a latte, a pot of tea, and a scone, lady at the counter was really nice and awesome.

I settle in to do some work and about 45 minutes later, a different woman who worked there comes over and very rudely tells me in a you-should-know better tone of voice, "You can't be doing that here," by which she was referring to charging my laptop while I worked. She informs me we can't charge our things because electricity there is "extortionary," waits for me to unplug my charger, then trudges off.

Having been to the developing world where electricity is rather expensive, I can say I have honestly never encountered this in my whole life. Assuming even a .50 GBP/kWh rate, my total for a whole day of power consumption with the laptop running on high could have only possibly come out to £0.000348.

Not sure if she was trying to kick me out or shoo me away to make space for other people - I hadn't been there but maybe an hour as I had gotten in at 9 and my train was at 11 and there was plenty of seating elsewhere - or what, but weirdest "coffee lounge"...

My Mum & I always knew we loved this place and the owners, but we didn't realise just how much until we they closed up before we got to catch them on Monday and we had to try elsewhere. No other local cafe compares. Stanley's not only has a calm, welcoming atmosphere carefully curated by the very kind owners, a very helpful customer base (always somebody to help me with the double doors as Mum is in a wheelchair), really truly deeeelicious fresh good food especially the toasties, tea, pastries and smoothies! But it feels clean, hygienic and very prettily decorated which we truly appreciated after trying to find somewhere else in town to match.

They always go above and beyond relentlessly, maybe that's the rarest trait of them all ☺️

We'll see...

Just called in this afternoon and had a wonderful happy time. The staff and indeed all of the customers were very friendly polite and kind. I felt like I was at home. Isn’t it wonderful to find such places in this hectic modern world. The hot chocolate was to die for and frankly was almost a meal in itself. I shall certainly make this a place that I will visit on a regular basis. This must be the focal point of Dover. Highly recommended. Dr Marcus...