Starbucks Coffee — Restaurant in Ribble Valley

I've been going to this Starbucks for a couple of years and never really had much issue aside from the occasional mistake with fraps. The staff were lovely and it was a pleasant experience... aside from one staff member named Leanne who was persistently grumpy and short-tempered. This came to a head when my wife and I used the app to order our drinks and then went to the drive through intercom as usual. This is something we always do because my wife has milk intolerances and sometimes the staff mishear over the intercom. When we pulled up a couple of minutes after ordering, Leanne was incredibly rude to us and told us we have to park up and wait because we had only given her '20 seconds' to make our drinks. I asked why it was any different from just ordering at the intercom, at which point she very reluctantly told us to go to the next window but only after telling us our drinks were 'going to the back of the queue'.

We collected our drinks from a different staff member (Leanne didn't serve us) and we drove off. We made a complaint because we don't pay quite a lot of money for drinks to be berated (we probably go to Starbucks at least three times a week). The complaints team apologised, assured us that we are doing nothing wrong in the way we use the app, and gave us free drinks.

We decided to return to the Starbucks assuming that maybe Leanne was just having a bad day and for a couple of weeks she wasn't working when we ordered and everything was fine. Then last Thursday when we went to get our drinks, it turned out to be Leanne. She immediately confronted us, saying she was sorry if we 'felt she was rude' but that the way we use the app messes up their orders. She said the baristas are timed for how quick they can make drinks and by ordering and driving up to the drive through so fast, we were making it more difficult for her. She also said we had been told off by the manager previously for this. This is absolutely not true - nobody has ever had an issue with this other than Leanne. I told her this and that she had been rude, but she was insistent that we accept that we had been using the app wrong and wanted us to admit to it. I was on my lunch break and had to get home quickly so we took our drinks and left and made the decision never to go back.

If you do go to this Starbucks, whether you are treated with respect or treated like an annoyance depends on who serves you. Personally, after such unpleasant experiences I just don't...

I’m really not joking here. I am a vegan and my partner has a dairy allergy, which they have stopped asking about when you order plant based milks recently.

THREE CONSECUTIVE TIMES these guys have given me dairy milk.

1. ordered 2 soya flat whites and got dairy milk - they give me 2 free drinks for the inconvenience, fair enough mistakes happen
2. using my free drinks vouchers, I ordered the same as 1 and the same happened. More dairy milk. Nothing done about this one.
3. ordered 2 mochas with oat milk, received 1 correct and 1 americano with dairy milk?….

Who has taken over this place? I haven’t been in a while but it used to be great. Only once I was offered an apology and some kind of compensation for this. I’ve not touched milk in about 4/5 years until this place.

Truly astonishing that in 2023 this is taken as such a light matter. I run a restaurant and the potential for disaster when ignoring allergies is enormous. The worst Starbucks I have been to anywhere in the world. I don’t like leaving bad reviews, but hopefully the ops manager will see this and get...

Please fix the intercom and the bad attitude.

I placed an order for an almond milk latte. It was hard to hear the response over the intercom so I assumed the server was asking if I wanted anything else; I replied that it was fine, I wasn’t bothered. The server misunderstood my response and replied, “you HAVE to be bothered if you’re allergic to milk”. I explained that I wasn’t and that I couldn’t hear her properly. I tried to place my order again. The response was, “Are you allergic to milk OR NOT?”

I cancelled my order and took my custom elsewhere; the service was friendly and polite, in contrast to the way I was spoken to at Starbucks.

I understand that the intercom system can make communication difficult but there are ways to resolve this issue without resorting to snappy and rude responses. My only explanation for the way I was spoken to was the early hour; I was the first customer of the day. Perhaps the server had woken up on the wrong side of the bed. In this case, I would suggest an extra shot of coffee in the server’s morning latte. With almond...