Creams Cafe Manchester Arndale — Restaurant in Manchester

What a terrible experience! I visited Creams yesterday afternoon my friend and our young children and one baby. All of us purchased something (one ice cream cone per child, and soft drinks/bubble teas for the adults).

Our children are too young for soft drinks / juices so we asked for a couple of glasses of tap water for them and were told by the woman who was serving that they don’t do tap water “because we don’t have a tap”. My friend pointed out the fully visible tap behind the counter so they did relent and give us two glasses of tap water.

Once I had finished my paid for drink I was still thirsty as I am breastfeeding my baby and need to stay hydrated.

I asked the person behind the counter (a different person to who had served us earlier) if I could either have a glass of tap water or if she could fill my flask. She gave me an extremely unpleasant look, then took the flask back of house.

She returned with the flask filled with HOT water. I thought there must have been a misunderstanding (I thought perhaps she thought I wanted the water to heat up baby food/milk) so asked if it could be replaced with cold water. She said this wasn’t possible because they ‘don’t have a cold tap’ and was extremely unpleasant about it (smirking throughout the whole conversation).

I have actually looked into this and it is NOT compliant with food safety to not have functioning hot and cold taps. According to info provided by the Food Standards Agency: “Every sink must have an adequate supply of hot and cold water for washing food and be of drinking quality.”

I approached the door host to ask to speak to the manager. He said there was no manager present! However someone did shortly come over to us. They explained again that there is no cold tap on the premises. I asked how then was it possible that our children had been provided with two glasses of cold tap water earlier on? She then admitted that it is policy to refuse customers drinking water. I have again looked into it and this is not a legal requirement as they are not a licensed premises. I can also understand places could put in place a rule that they cannot have customers coming in and drinking tap water without making a purchase. I would however argue that refusing PAYING customers who need it (children too young to drink fizzy or sugary drinks and breastfeeding women) tap water is NOT a good look at all and represents the very worst customer service. But relishing in it and giving them HOT water is just bizarre!

Also, it’s not a very pleasant feeling as a customer to be lied to about not having taps especially when the lies put the company at risk of being accused of not following basic food safety guidance.

I can see that this policy has led to other customers leaving bad reviews… perhaps it’s time to rethink this unpleasant, unethical and greedy policy. Otherwise in future people will just pop to the altogether more pleasant and less money grabbing place just across the way -...

All Fingers and Thumbs...literally.

The service here was poor. Whilst waiting for our desserts, which shouldn't have taken too long as the place wasn't busy at all, we witnessed a couple get up and leave and ask for a refund because their food was taking so long, two of the four staff then seemingly struggled on the phone to figure out how to refund the order and then to top it all of I watched two separate staff members stick their fingers in two of my orders!

Once the food was brought over I politely asked them to remake it because I'd seen them pull apart my waffle piece by piece, by hand, no gloves. The response I got was "It's ok I washed my hands." ....No...that is not ok. The staff then went to get gloves, so they had them, just didn't wish to use them (he took them off as soon as he'd served me my food). The other staff member brought me a slushie after pushing bits off the side of the cup and into it with her finger. Again I asked for it to be remade.

My partner then said that another customer had been complaining to the staff about the lack of hygiene.

The staff really looked like they hated each other, glaring at one another, assumingly wishing they were somewhere else.

As soon as I complained and said I saw them use their fingers on my food and ask them politely to remake it for me all customer service went out the window. Niceties went out the window and they turned around to leave before even putting my food down without even a word.

Basic food prep hygiene is poor as well as customer service. After looking at the reviews for the other restaurant close by, this strikes me as an ongoing issue.

We will not...

I’ve been to a few Creams branches, and this is no exception. We came on a Saturday afternoon and felt like having ice cream after playing at the virtual game experience. There is a wide selection of food offered at Creams from sweet to savoury, however the sweet menu is much larger. There is a big variety of ice cream served at Creams. The quality of the ice cream is amazing, and each one is very flavourful - I’ve nearly tried them all! You are allowed to have a taste of upto 3 flavours if you can’t decide which one to buy. My friend and got a variety of flavours as we found it difficult to decide which one was best :D

The waffles are also delicious. They’re not too crunchy or too soft, and I like how the servers are generous with the toppings. If you want a specific amount of toppings on your desert, they will happily do that for you.

Definitely come to Creams if you want to satisfy that...