Gro Coffee — Restaurant in Scotland

My wife and I decided to visit while our car was in for service at a nearby dealership. We have been to the Irvine branch many times, but this was the first time to the Ayr branch. It was a busy morning. When we entered, the staff member who greeted us looked rushed. He advised there would be a 5 min wait for the table. We accepted this, so he asked us for a name to write on a waiting list. While I do not have a local accent, I do indeed speak English as a native language. After four attempts at trying to understand our name, he muttered under his breath, gave up in frustration and wrote something only he could understand. Oh well, as long as we got a table. around 6 mins later he came to us "hey you, table ready" I guess that works. Fortunately the table was located along the western wall of the building as this was furtherest away from any of the sound system speakers. The music was too loud elsewhere, I do not know how other diners and indeed staff communicate with that level of noise. We were able to hold a reasonable conversation, but it did not come naturally due to the background noise level, being the music and other diners trying to make themselves heard over the music. Other people were seated adjacent us about 5 min after we were seated. For whatever reason, these people were served first, both in taking their order and receiving their order, not just a few min difference, but they were almost finished eating by the time a server came to take our order. Maybe the greeting staff member played a part? I hope not. We asked for minor adjustents to our order. This was happily agreed to by our server taking the order. The coffee came first. I understand why, but I usually like coffee after my meal, not before, oh well minor inconvenience. It would have been nice if the coffee was hot rather than lukewarm, at best, though. When our order arrived, the adjustments had been attempted but had been carried out incorrectly. With time now pushing on (We had been in the cafe over an hour) we accepted it and ate. A part of my order was poached eggs. Having some experience in the kitchen, I know poached eggs are often cooked using a touch of vinegar. I seemed to have eggs with my vinegar. While I could feel these were eggs, all I could taste was a strong taste of vinegar. Extremely disappointing. On leaving, the counter staff (where one goes to to pay the bill) were very pleasant and the takeaway cakes looked delicious. Had I better faith in these tasting as good as they looked I may have taken one with me. Given my experience that day, I didn't want to risk it. Somehow, Irvine branch is lightyears ahead of Ayr branch. Advice to would be vistors, go to the Irvine branch...

This place had been recommended to us by friends. We decided to give it a try on a Saturday afternoon whilst out shopping. We were greeted & seated at a table for 2, almost as soon as we entered, despite the place being fairly busy. Then the waiting began.......the girl who showed us to our table was nowhere to be seen so, after about 15 minutes, we called over another server to take our order - 2 drinks & 2 meals. After another 25-minute wait, we called over someone who appeared to be 'in charge' & said we'd been waiting a total of 40 minutes & didn't even have our cold drinks! (During this time, someone came & split the table for 4 next to ours & joined it on to ours - making ours a 4 & leaving a 2 next to us. Shortly after, they seated a family of 3 at the table for 2 while the 2 of us were sitting at a table for 4?!) Our food arrived & looked very good, but the girl literally put it down & disappeared again. We had no cutlery or napkins, so I had to call someone over again! She brought the cutlery but disappeared quickly without offering us any condiments/sauces. We STILL had no drinks so again called someone over. When she brought the drinks, they weren't quite what we'd ordered so she offered us a free soft drink. During this entire time the family next to us were experiencing exactly the same - 2 of their meals came but no drinks & the third meal following much later. They too were left looking for napkins, condiments, etc When I went to pay at the till it was obvious that the bar was in chaos - only 1 person trying to get hot & cold drinks, while another took payments. I'm not writing this review to be critical for the sake of it. The staff clearly work hard & were very polite but there seemed to be no overall organisation of the restaurant floor - we were served by 4 different people. Why did we not just have 1 server who was responsible for a section of tables & made sure we had drinks first, then everything we needed to go with our meal? A final point is that nobody 'checked in' to ask if our meal was ok - I thought this was standard practice? The food was great, the overall atmosphere is good, the toilets were very clean but the service was...

We just wanted a light lunch, en route from Glencoe to Cairnryan and thought this place looked nice. We were told there was a 15 minutes to be seated which we didn't mind given that it was lunchtime and the cafe was fairly busy. We were shown to a seat where we waited another 20 minutes for our order to be taken. The waitress didn't apologise for this delay nor even smile when speaking to us. She showed absolutely no interest in us nor her job but we thought maybe this was just because she was busy or maybe wasn't happy in her job.... we'd watched the same attitude when she was with other customers. We waited a further 25 minutes before calling her over to ask her where our order was, simply to be told, very abruptly and without an apology, 'we're very busy', before walking off again. No apology was offered at any time for the delay nor an offer to go check how long it might be before we'd be served!. Another 5 minutes went past so I asked her to go check when we would be served as we were now running late. Her retort was that I should have told her we were in a hurry on our arrival! I explained that we weren't in a hurry when we arrived but due to the unreasonable wait we now were! She still made no apology and instead brought our teas and water over from the bar but still no food.arrived. We waited a further 5 minutes and as neither she nor our food had appeared we finally left....hungry, annoyed and now late. I can't speak about the other members of staff but this young lady needs trained in customer service and her general attitude towards all her customers. Our first visit here turned out to be a very disappointing experience. This might have been better had there only been a few customers in but surely if the business accept customers and the cafe is capable of seating them all at one time, it should also be capable of feeding them within a reasonable wait time. So customer, if you can't risk waiting for over an hour to eat lunch or you'd expect an apology for such a long delay and maybe a bit of polite conversation during your wait (even if not very friendly!) then best not go here!...