Bird Bakery — Restaurant in Alamo Heights

Giving a 2-Star rating for this visit. I remember really liking this place when it first opened. My friend owned a boutique shop four doors down in the plaza and I’d grab a treat often when I went to her boutique! This morning was disappointing mainly for two reasons: (1) very under cooked apple pie dough and (2) the negative and mocking (aka employees laughing in the back) attitudes when issue brought to a FOH (front of house) employee.

The issues with the mini apple pie item was the dough was beyond mealy and/or undercooked. Also, the super long apple strips were not comfortably bite size but literally one long apple peel from around the fruit. Then the fruit was NOT drained/dried out properly so there was excess liquid collected at bottom of pie = very mealy dough. The mouth feel was BAD and the dough still tasted under done. When I approached the counter employee…she brought it to the back kitchen and “the bakers”. I could hear the 3-4 employees start laughing and when another employee opened the swinging doors I heard the one employee say, “She said….”

The counter employee came back up front and told me she “spoke to the ‘bakers’” and they said it was like that because they used two different doughs - phyllo dough on top and crust on bottom. It was a “flaky” dough. Well, that doesn’t make it any better, worse in fact because means “the bakers” still didn’t know how to technically cook CRUST dough right to NOT have MEALY/MUSHY dough. I told employee the phyllo dough top was fine and showed her the flaky, crispy edge. Then I picked up the crust part and mushed it between my fingers. She proceeded to tell me she was sorry the pie wasn’t “to my liking”!!! Wth!??! It technically was not baked right which resulted in an INEDIBLE and an UNAPPETIZING apple pie!!!

I then told her I felt qualified to press the issue because I’m literally wrapping up my professional culinary school training and knew what I was talking about!!! I wasn’t some random customer making a random Karen complaint! The FOH employee then told me “The Bakers” were professionally trained and qualified. Well, then they should be able to take constructive criticism about a subpar bakery item and then CORRECT it instead of laughing at the customer like they’re dumb and don’t know what they’re talking about!

I do have to say, though, the front counter employee did make attempts to make it right, and offered us a couple of substitute items for the Apple pie. My husband took a peanut butter, red velvet cupcake, and a walnut fudge brownie for later. The breakfast items we ate were delicious also. I had the spinach, Parmesan quiche, a personal serving size and my husband had the breakfast sandwich that had an over medium egg, avocado, and cheese on an English muffin. The coffee and chai tea latte...

I’ve been a loyal customer for about 10 years, not because of the staff, which is always less than friendly, but the product. However, for many years there has been a supply and demand issue with the frosted sugar cookies and themed pastries on holidays. For some reason, despite the demand, there is never enough to go around, and they sell out very quickly. Therefore, you have to get there when the bakery opens at 9 am to get your items. Well I’ve been at 9 am on a major holiday, and the staff told me the cookies weren’t ready, and I could come back in an hour. They were completely nonchalant about it, and didn’t even apologize. They had no regard for my time. I am not a morning person, and if I’m awake early on a weekend, on my time off to get cookies, I’m expecting them to be ready for purchase. This wasn’t the first time I’ve had this issue, and I’ve tried multiple times on holidays to call about product availability and no one answers the phone. I went today, an hour after opening at 10 am for Fourth of July cookies, and the young man helping me informed me they were unavailable and reveals that they sold two dozen cookies to one customer, and they were out. Why were there only two dozen available to begin with? That’s nothing compared to demand. I proceeded to order another sugar cookie topped with fruit and a few other items. When I got home, I realized he gave me the last pathetic looking sugar cookie decorated like a grill, instead of the one I ordered. I contacted bird bakery on Instagram to inform them of the mistake because I didn’t have time to call and go back, nonetheless. I informed them of the lack of availability and overall inconvenience I have experienced on multiple occasions. They apologized, but offered no solutions to make it right. I asked if they could hold a few cookies aside the next morning for pickup, and I could return the wrong cookie for the inconvenience. They told me it was first come, first served, yet they had no issue selling their entire stock of sugar cookies to one customer today. The blatant disregard for customer service and making sure their most loyal customers are happy is frustrating. After more than 10 years of being a customer, I decided I can’t deal with the lack of customer service anymore, and I’m taking my business elsewhere. I’m absolutely livid that I invested so much time, effort and money into a bakery that doesn’t appreciate my business and refuses to adapt to customers’...

We got our wedding cake and grooms cake through Birds Bakery and the experience of planning the cake with them was nothing but stressful. I wish I looked through the reviews more before booking so I would've known to go with someone else. We were told by the event coordinator the decorator would be able to execute the ideas we showed her. Then a couple months after we booked and paid the $160 deposit, we went in and finalized our cake design. A week after we finalized it, only a month before the wedding, I started getting emails from the event coordinator first saying the decorator probably couldn't do our design, then going back and forth over the next couple of weeks on what the decorator could and couldn't do in regard to our design. Finally, TWO DAYS before the wedding she confirmed the decorator could do what we asked for. They were also apparently going to add on a design charge the day the final payment was due, but we were never told of that nor ever given a quote for the design. At least she offered to take off this charge? Then the morning of the wedding my husband called to pay the final payment and he was asked by her "When were you going to pick up the cakes?" We had discussed in both meetings and had it in our contract and invoice that they were supposed to deliver the cakes to the venue. And they still didn't even know they were supposed to deliver it on the morning of our wedding! Finally the design turned out to be so poorly executed when I first looked at them at my venue I couldn't quite make out what they even were. In all the inspiration pics we sent them were bright, vivid colors for both cakes. Instead they both came out very dark and dull. For the grooms cake they literally just made a black cake with some silver splatter on it when it was supposed to be a mix of bright purples, greens and blues like all the inspo pics. I complained to the event coordinator and they pretty much just offered to send us a Bird Bakery gift card to cover the grooms cake which we still haven't received almost a month later. This place is a total mess and if you ever need a cake for a special event like a wedding I'd recommend...