M&S Café — Restaurant in St Albans

IN WITH THE AUTOMATION, OUT WITH THE CUSTOMER SERVICE.

In November of 2022 the old style M&S Cafe at this big London Colney branch was completely overhauled to what you see today. It has lots of tables crowded together to get as much money, I mean customers, in. Little food is on display because now you get to look at small images of the products on a touch screen. There are several of these surrounded by excited kids, irritated adults and bemused, disenfranchised, pensioners.

On Saturday 8 July 2023, after spending an hour making purchases in the store downstairs, we went up to the cafe for lunch. M&S cafe food is generally average, often a little below, but thanks to London Colney's lack of a proper restaurant we had little choice but to use this place. Imagine our surprise at seeing the alterations after our last visit a year ago. I walked past the touch-screen order boards and asked a member of staff behind the counter where I could order. She pointed at the electronic devices. "Can't I order here?". No. My heart sank. At least in MacDonald's one can still order at the till. And while we're talking about Maccy Dee's, who pioneered this crass method of procurement, a 2018 investigation by the Metro newspaper found faeces on every McD's touch-screen swabbed. Every single one! How often are the staff cleaning these M&S Cafe screens? Every thirty minutes? Once a day? Who knows but it won't be after every use so there will be plenty of time for customers exiting the bog to smear God knows what on the screens. You can use them, but I damn well won't. If this is the way forward then I assume Marks & Spencer has nothing but contempt for...

The refurbished restaurant is an unmitigated disaster.

Three months after reopening, the kitchen is still constantly short of food, the staff are overwhelmed and short of training.

The ordering system is inflexible and doesn't tell you if an item is out of stock until you've gone to try and add it to the basket. At least with the old tills, we were able to amend items (no sauce etc). Now we're told there's simply no way to ask the kitchen for such tweaks, vastly reducing the menu available to those with allergies and particular dietary requirements.

The restaurant itself is now ridiculously overcrowded. The sheer number of tables packed into the restaurant makes it impossible for people to navigate through, as well as leaving the inexperienced waiting staff roaming around looking for the right table to deliver any food that miraculously makes it out of the kitchen.

Considering how long the restaurants were closed for refurbishment, it is very disappointing that more thought wasn't put into how to provide a functional dining service. We might have spent a long time queueing for food before the refurbishment, but at least once we'd ordered, the food was guaranteed to arrive promptly. Now, we can order and end up spending an eternity waiting for food that'll never arrive.

If I could give this review zero stars out of...

Vey disappointed, service was non existent and hygiene level poor ..we popped in for an cup of tea and a muffin mid afternoon ( 9/4/25 ) cafe was not overly busy . Firstly a member of staff decided to hoover the floor around and in between diners while they were eating , he wore some type of battery back pack which was so noisy you couldn’t hear yourself think ??. He then decided to remove the hoover head in the corner by the trays of food and drinks waiting to be served . We witnessed the head being yanked off by several staff . They then proceeded to serve the food and drinks waiting. Didn’t wash their hands after handling the Hoover head and dust from the head went where ? We had waited ages for our Hot drinks , and observed them just sitting on the side with no urgency to serve , eventually I had to go and collect our drinks myself . I raised the point the drinks would be cold and how hygienic was it to remove the hoover head over open food etc but the staff member just looked at me like i came from another planet . Where is basic food hygiene practise in this cafe ? Do staff even wash their hands ? Hot drinks were lukewarm by the time I collected them . Not a great experience , won’t stop for a coffee or a snack again Very poor standards M&S you should...