Starbucks — Restaurant in Alameda

It's an OK place to come and write at, but the staff doesn't know the difference between customer interaction and customer service/customer experience. Translated, that means they are slow, uninterested in serving customers in a timely and efficient manner, self involved and facetiously, superficially self enchanted.

There are one or two girls who work at night who have their head on straight and are cool too, so its not all bad. But brother, go to this place in the morning and it is more a crippled runway of self involved showboats and not black apron baristas of the Starbuck's caliber.

Just to show I am not slamming them, I will make an objective comparison. The Starbucks in the Safeway around the corner I can get better product, better service and a better customer experience at.

The Lone Comic circleR

6/2018 Updater:

I kinda have to visit this Starbucks for the sake of convenience, and any other coffee shop that professes the name isn't much improvement.

I begin to weep for my fellow coffee consumers.

I ran into the one ray of sunshine at this location in an employee I'd known for most of the time I'd been coming there, and it was early and there was time so I rolled the relationship and asked him if he would let me bring his pourover to a worthy Brewer's Cup technique composition.

He agreed and I succinctly described the competitive coffee world standards of wetting the grinds to bloom them before pouring percentages of the volume of water in two pours to get flavor and strength balanced, the minimum of the industry standards I advocate.

After he was prepped, the manager, who has managed the place for some years now, stepped in and took over the brewing process. She didn't bloom the grinds (after having spoken to the SF district barista champion about pourover process models when preparing my Kenyan last week, I found out that Starbuck's doesn't bloom the grounds when doing pourovers) per procedure.

She then left the coffee to over-extract, the cardinal sin of pourover brewista coffeemaking and as I watched her face, the fact did not seem to register at all. They get this in the city.

All for the sake of being able to make drinks between drinks, which is the way Starbuck's trains. Take too long to make other drinks, the pourover suffers, and that is what I got.

I wish I could give this place a rating of half a star cause to not improve over four years is just a criminal...

Never had such a bad experience at a Starbucks. Asked which of their pastries didn’t have eggs in them (due to sons egg allergy) and the guy said the blueberry scone. I asked if he was sure and he told me he didn’t know and they didn’t have a list of allergens. Another person (manager?) couldn’t be bothered to stop what he was doing and pointed me to their website. After some time I was able to pull up their website which told me to ask the barista. Meanwhile the guy taking my order rudely moved over to the next register and just moved to the next in line. The guy behind the guy taking orders said he could pull up the info but “it will take a long time” to which i replied ok because I couldn’t get on their WiFi and my cell reception didn’t work so I was just sitting there asking how they didn’t have a list of allergens in their store. He finally stopped his huffing and puffing and went to the back to get the list. Took another 10 minutes but I finally got the allergen list. Turns out no pastries are egg free. I also had a problem with payment. I had $13 left on my Starbucks card and somehow ended up still paying $9 for my $16 order. He apparently only registered $7 off my card. I just checked and the balance is 0. I was so fed up by the egg issue I just didn’t even put up a fight on the payment. Buyer beware! At least he gave me a free drink card for the egg fiasco and profusely apologized but the damage...

Came into store about 8pm Saturday night. Except for several occupied chairs on right side, all chairs were on top of tables and fixtures. No place for disabled to sit while waiting for coffee. When I finally received my caramel Frappuccino it was the worst I have ever had. It was made by the skinny brown haired girl with a dark Santa Cruz sweatshirt. I don’t believe she knew how to put coffee or drizzle into the cup. It tasted like water with powdered cocoa and powdered milk. Peet’s gives a choice of whole milk or 2% milk not SB’s fake powdered milk. I have been drinking frappuccinos/frappes for years, esp Starbucks (until I discovered Peet’s). Even McDonald’s does it better than Starbucks, apparently. Both McDonald’s and Peet’s staff are more mature and respectful. If this service is not corrected I will have my bank reverse the charges due to false advertising and bait-and-switch (fraud). Starbuck’s has a duty to properly train and supervise staff. You cannot charge someone for a defective product and service. This is result of incompetent supervisors. I expect my tip back also, and I will not tip anyone at...