85°C Bakery Cafe - Alhambra — Restaurant in Alhambra

When I heard news that Alhambra was going to be opening up its very own 85, I was overjoyed. I scoped out the place before it opened and saw that it took up a good amount of space on Main Street. But upon visiting the store - this has got to be my least favorite 85 location out of the many ones I have visited. The layout of the store is so horrible that you can't help but wonder what they were thinking when they designed this layout for the store.

Upon walking into the bakery, you're immediately greeted by the sight of the familiar shelves that encase the ever popular "fresh bread" that 85 sells. But there's only a small L-shaped section in the store that houses the bread. I was a little confused by how tiny the bread section was and even looked around to see if there was more bread elsewhere. I came a week after the Grand Opening, and it was still packed. So the tiny section was cramped. Everywhere you turned, you were shoved or pressed against another person. This made trying to get the perfect bread incredibly tough. They really need to rethink their bread section.

There's also a huge window where you can look into the kitchen and see the pastry chefs hard at work. I think the window can be blocked by more shelves or something. And then you have a gigantic space where there's only 3-4 tables but lots of empty room all around. Hopefully they'll add more tables. If the storefront is already so big, why not use the space to its fullest? The line snaked along all the way to the bread section and almost out the door, making it really difficult to maneuver.

The bread selection is quite small, so they have to try to put as many breads out there as possible. Unfortunately they didn't have any of my favorites when I went there, but of the ones I did get, they tasted very solid and similar to all the other ones I have had at various 85 locations. I also ordered a sea salt jasmine tea, which is super amazing. They announced right when I ordered that it would take another 15-20 minutes to brew a fresh batch of jasmine tea. Which was fine, but the tea I had was super bitter. Guess I know that the tea was made fresh!

tl;dr - Try to go when you "think" there will be less people. The layout is totally unfit to house more than a certain number of guests. There's a ton of parking in the lots and the street, but if you go on a Friday night or weekend, note that parking will be...

UPDATE - they re-activated their app so that once again they can scan membership via the app, vs asking for phone #. Thanks for listening 85C.

Pastries, cakes, coffee and staff are ALL good and deserving of 5 stars, BUT

Just found out that I can no longer use the 85C app to scan for points. Clerk asked for my phone number instead.

I can understand that phone # is a good method if customers don't have their app in hand, but why not consider giving the flexibility of using BOTH? To me, this is going backward. In addition, some customers prefer not to say their phone numbers out loud at the store for safety reasons (stalkers).

Other stores (such as Starbucks) encourage their customers to use their app for everything – points, rewards, and loading money on their gift cards. This is very convenient and customers love it.

Please don't take away a feature that your customers like, especially when others stores offer this convenience. It's the way the industry is going, so please don't go backward.

Thank you.

By the way, I tried to submit this using the app, but the app asked me to upgrade Captcha because "my browser doesn't support current version". Well, I am using the latest Android on a Google Pixel Phone that has auto-update, so the message doesn't make sense and is insulting. I tried to "update Captcha" according to their website, and it just went nowhere so I had to give up. What a frustrating experience!

Is it possible that they are doing this intentionally to avoid official feedback? Well, I'm leaving the comment...

Unlike the other servers in this bakery, the server in the picture is extremely rude. We always had good experiences with 85*C before, but not this time.

We asked this server for an extra empty and he seemed to be ignoring us. I called him two times since he was the only one near, but he gave me a side-eye. So, I managed to grab it on my own since it was within reach by just the tip of the cup bottom with my hand. It is then he started to talk for the first time and yelled, "Do not do this! This is not okay!!" in a condescending way for like three times. It sounded as if he was scolding like a boss of this place.

If it is not okay, why was he ignoring us when asked for a cup? Also, could he not just talk rather than yell in a condescending way when interacting with a customer especially since he is in a role of serving people? Should not act in an unprofessional way as if he hates what he is doing. But the other servers are nice and the breads from this bakery are good enough though.

We thought of challenging him, but then I realized there are kids from other customers around, so not a good idea to cause commotion. So, it’s only 1 star ⭐️ for this. Also I hope the...