Little Dessert Shop Cardiff — Restaurant in Great Britain

I was very disappointed with the service considering they were not busy and they had time to stand around a talk rather than clean items that would be used by customers this Sunday after around 1.50pm

When we arrived we were told we can sit down anywhere as we were the only customer there on Sunday.

Then things got embarrassing. The young female waitress wearing a white mask with black dots/spots after giving us a menu went into the kitchen - only to arrive with two drinking glasses and a glass jug of water. There was no tray to carry them so you can image her dirty fingerprints were inside and outside the two glasses carried and the glass jug was not washed properly and was smokey or cloudy looking.

This shows the lack of training as far as health and hygiene is concerned. I have been working in the catering industry since 1985 in Cardiff and was trained how to provide customer service at Barry College.

Glasses should never be picked up by waitering staff by the parts where the customer mouth go, and no fingerprints should be on any of the inside and outside of the glasses except for the very base of them.

I ended up cleaning them myself. The water was a bit warm due to not running the tap for long. I decided to overlook this.

Then a paper papkin came to the table with our four different cutlery sets in each which were filthy dirty. Which means they were not polished with a clean tea towel and left to dry on the dirty rinse water which shows the dishwasher water was not changed or clean to rinse. Costic soda is used and very dangerous if not treated properly.

I asked for the manager but a young man stated she/he was not present and i could speak to him in charge. To cut a long story short i took him to the side and told him about the cutlery only which needs to be changed. The young man never even came to the table to inspect the evidence and left us with the same dirty cutlery. The dessert arrived and we had to wait 8min before i told the same young man can we have clean cutlery which took another 4 and a half mintes to arrive with an apology.

The ice cream melted and the hot waffles became slightly hard and cool due to the wait.

Staff training is needed in customer service and health and hygiene. If the company wants this i can certainty provide this through my training company because thise working in City Road branch have not recieved this in any form crom what we observed on Sunday.

acapacademyuk.co.uk (webpage)

Even though they were clean with protective clothing and all face masks, all cutlery and crockery were not to the standards i was allowed to work towards. This needs to change for the amount we paid for the small portions given along with poor service.

Next time i will take pictures to evidence my complaints and record things where ever i eat. Because prices have raised considerable since the lifting of lockdown and their service are not great for the amount we now have to pay.

I...

I placed my order at 20:17 with the estimated delivery time being 25 minutes. After placing the order, the app stated the estimated arrival time was 20:45. At 21:15 I called the restaurant to find out where my order was. I was told the food was out for delivery and had left the restaurant 10 minutes earlier at 21:05. They said it would be no more than 10 minutes so should be delivered by 21:25. My home is 0.70 miles from the restaurant. I called again at 21:35 as my ordered was still not delivered. I was told it was just leaving and would be another 10 minutes. My order was delivered at 21:55. This is 1 hour 40 minutes after I placed my order.

The shop told me deliveroo would need to deal with any refund request but they purposely did not complete my order so I had to contact deliveroo to complain. Deliveroo could not help with a refund as the shop uses their own delivery drivers. So this was another lie from the shop.

I have left a review on deliveroo app for this store and they have now replied to my review saying they will credit my account as an apology. They have credited my account with £2.50 which can only be used in their restaurant. £2.50 is ridiculous compared to the experience I received. Quite frankly, they have only said they have added a credit in their response, not how much, so they look like a decent restaurant apologising to customers.

I will never be ordering from here again.

Update - the restaurants owner has now apologised to me personally, offered explanation for the experience I had and offered discounts off further orders. Although I may not order from this restaurant again, I appreciated the apology from the...

UPDATE: 19.10.2024 Despite poor service in the past, we continued to order from Little Dessert Shop because it's still the best waffle place in Cardiff. My husband recently bought some for delivery and I was surprised to meet the new owner bringing our order. He was super lovely and enthusiastic about the business and as a fellow business owner, I wish him well. :)

Waffles are still delicious and we tried some cookie dough for the first time too. Delivery was definitely faster than past experiences!

I'm not sure if you can change the type of ice cream you'd like via the website (rather than leave a note and hope for the best) as I don't normally do the ordering, but if that became a function it would be greatly appreciated!

01.11.2022 We generally like their waffles, but the past couple of orders have been extremely late. Tonight's one arrived two hours after ordering (ETA 1hr) with the wrong ice cream (luckily, we prefer vanilla over chocolate, but still). In the past, it's taken as long as 3-4hrs, though they gave us smoothies as compensation.

I'm starting to wonder if our orders are ignored or forgotten until we call in to ask (hours later, when it's due to have arrived).

EDIT: It's happened again, so it looks like we'll have to find somewhere else to order from. We'd been regular customers for over a year but they seem nonplussed about the...