Avenue Bread - James St — Restaurant in Bellingham

Edit: changing my review to one star and never going back. Refusing to refund wrong orders, rude, untruthful.

The food is pretty good. Not consistent (sometimes great, sometimes kind of bad. Suppose it depends on who’s cooking that day and maybe whether or not the place has been staffed appropriately that day). And is the reason I’m not giving this place 1 star.

However.

It annoys me when I am pressured into leaving a tip (and making me manually click through the tip page to pay IS pressuring) when 1. I order at a counter and pay beforehand, 2. Get my own drinks, silverware, napkins, butter, takeout boxes, 3. No one actually waits on me, checks up, asks if I need anything, 4. (And this is the big one) I have to bus my own table. This is a Burger King experience - I don’t tip for that. If you want to leave a passive tip jar out, fine. But take it off the credit card thing and stop trying to manipulate people. It’s rude and entitled and I’m tired of this trend everywhere. Pay your own employees. Oh, and they charge for takeout boxes too! Mind blowing.

Also, I was in there the other day and this guy came in filthy, fingernails about an inch long and absolutely black with dirt. He was dragging a filthy blanket that was draped around him. As he went to his seat, this blanket brushed over people’s shoulders, chair backs, tables and then over the top of his table, where he put it as he sat. When he got up to go, his pants were down. Like down, down. Like bare butt crack on the seat down. What happened to basic threshold rules for service? Should my kid have to see that? And what about exposure? What about reasonable expectation for health and safety when in an establishment? The fact is, that level of unsanitary was not safe regardless of his circumstances and the employees should be trained on how to deal with this. (Not their fault, owners should be training them and they’re clearly not.)

Most of the employees are pretty polite most of the time. There are one or two that are sometimes not. This isn’t a huge deal, nothing major has ever happened and everyone gets grumpy sometimes. But combined with everything else, it just grates a...

The food is mediocre at best and WAY WAY over priced; most especially for a place where you are expected to bus your own table. All this says, is they have pure contempt for their customer. Every time I’ve attempted one of these Avenue Bread locations they are out of croissants. One time, ok, but everytime? This to me is inexcusable, they should be ordering/making more to meet demand. I’m not going at the end or ever anywhere near the end of the day either. Why can’t Bellingham have a decent sandwich shop, where they actually know what they are doing?

Today I wanted to get a small kale salad and sandwich (a half of sandwich would have been ideal), which at Avenue is not possible. The only way I could get my kale salad was to get an entree size salad???? Seriously? And you know what else?!?!? I had them omit the pumpkin seeds (because I’m seriously allergic) and the chicken, did they lower my cost? Of course not! Which is may not be a deal breaker, until you read below on how they charged for my husband’s burger. What sandwich place can you not get small side salads? It is an industry standard, you get a sandwich, you should also be able get a small salad or small soup of your choice... seriously Avenue Bread get it together. Today my husband wanted a burger. EVERYTHING was extra, and I mean EVERYTHING PER ITEM ADDITIONAL: tomatoes .50 cents EXTRA , arugula .50 cents EXTRA, onions .50 cents EXTRA , avocado $1.00 EXTRA, cheese $1.00 EXTRA, bacon $1.00 EXTRA!!!! This was on top of the burger already being $6 for meat, bread and mustard, mayo, and iceberg. Yes, his burger was $10 and nothing to speak of 😡. Oh and please, let me remind you that this place makes you bus your own table 🙄

And to top off our visit, there is a large exit sign over one of their two sets of exterior doors, the sign is illuminated and you can see it from across the restaurant. This door, the one with the lit exit sign above it? Ya, it’s the set of doors they keep locked. It’s the other set of doors, without the exit sign above it, that you are supposed to exit. Seriously, pure contempt for their customers. The fire marshal needs to get on...

We went to the James St location on Saturday, I ordered two egganue's to go & it was supposed to be a 25-30 min I stood and waited, and waited. At the 1/2 hour mark I went up to the counter and asked if they could check on my food because it had been 1/2 an hour and no one had called my name, she looked around and found our food sitting on the top of the soup pots, I'm guessing that's their "warmers"... she then tosses onto the counter in front of me and walks away. I stood there & waited, and she came back, "is there something else" she says rudely, I said "can I have a bag please", and " our food has been sitting there for who knows how long, I've been sitting here waiting to be called"... again a RUDE response "apologies" and she walked away.

Our food was not good & it was very rubbery and chewy, and tasted like it was sitting for a while, the cheese had even started to harden again because it wasn't all that warm any longer. This was my husbands first experience with an Avenue Bread breakfast, he likely won't return as the food wasn't worth the wait or the price.

Generally I have good experiences at Avenue so that's why I'm giving 2 Stars, but this experience should...