Caribou Coffee — Restaurant in Alexandria

My wife and I were in Alexandria last night (Friday) for a conference this morning. We got to our Airbnb and realized there was no good coffee there (They had Folgers). So being longtime Caribou addicts we Googled nearby stores hoping we could run quick and get some beans for the morning. YAY, they close @ 8:00. It was 7:48! So we immediately hopped in the car. Immediately! We got there @ 7:56 and ran in the store and placed our order...

At which time we were informed that "We close in three minutes". Which to me means we were there BEFORE they close.

I ignored the comment, even though I wouldn't normally. I'd been driving for several hours and just wanted to get back to our Airbnb.

So we got two bags of beans and a drink for myself, my wife got nothing. We asked for the beans to be ground for metal. They were not ground for metal! We got back to our Airbnb with the beans, and realized that we had two half pound bags of coffee. Somehow we lost a pound of coffee. Each bag was half empty! Somehow half of our coffee disappeared. I have pictures of it! I'm so confused!

I get it was close to closing time. I worked restaurants for many years and I remember how it was when people would come in right before closing. However, this was a four minute transaction. I have my Google map history to prove it. We were out of there by 8:01 (I looked)!

The worst part of this was, I left a 10% tip on a $36 order to get ripped off. On top of that, my beautiful wife, feeling guilty for inconveniencing the worker, left an additional $5 cash tip (I'm sure it's on your video cameras).

So, being irritated by that, I did the math... We gave $8.60 in gratuity for FOUR minutes of interaction. That's $2.15 a MINUTE! That's $129 an HOUR.

That being said, I don't want anyone fired. We all have our bad days... but this was unacceptable and that's...

I don’t normally write reviews but this one I felt compelled to. Today I decided to go to Caribou North (I went last month as well) and this is the second time where I spent 15-20 minutes in the drive through. Now when I arrived, there were only two people ahead of me and I got to order right away. However, I still had to wait that long to get my beverage. Since this is the second time this has happened to me in the span of two months, seems a little ridiculous. I can imagine it’s probably like this everyday. When I go to Scooters Coffee down the road, my wait time is 2-5 minutes, if that. I shouldn’t have to wait this long in the drive thru. It’s the morning, it’s going to be busy, staff your people appropriately. I think I’ll take my business back...

Took OVER 20 minutes to serve each car in line; people were leaving their cars in line, going inside, and being served before the line ever even moved . Headset left on while I waited to place my order so I could hear them inside clearly struggling with little to no communication between staff members. No apology was given for the HOUR long wait time to get served a coffee and a sandwich . I finally got up to the window; paid, 10 minutes later someone else came to the window and said they didn’t know what my order even was, TEN MORE MINUTES PASS, and they come to the window and for the SECOND TIME, tell me they FORGOT WHAT I ORDERED. Not sure how they were so...