C'Ville Coffee — Restaurant in Charlottesville

I visited Cville Coffee for the first time on April 3rd, 2025. The drinks were decent, so we returned the next morning—big mistake.

For context, I have one arm and no prosthetic. I ordered five large hot coffees to go and had my wife with me to help carry them. The barista placed the overfilled cups on the counter with no sleeves, no drink carriers, and no stoppers. I asked for a carrier and stoppers to safely transport the drinks. Her response? “We don’t have any.” Stunned, I carefully walked out, trying to avoid a spill. Just two blocks later, the lids on three of the five cups popped off. The paper cups were completely warped—clearly not suited for hot liquids. Scalding coffee spilled onto my lap, legs, arm, and hand, and ruined the white interior of our rental car.

I called and asked to speak with the owner. Tyuan, the shop owner, called me back an hour later to apologize. I appreciated that he took responsibility and admitted they should’ve had stoppers and cup sleeves. I also received a handwritten apology from him and the barista. They’ve since added the safety items that were missing—but I don’t know if they’ve switched to better-quality to-go cups yet.

Tyuan also told me that in 25 years, no customer has ever asked for a stopper, and that I’m the first person to be burned by their coffee. That’s a shocking admission and, frankly, unacceptable. When serving scalding beverages, the safety of customers should never depend on whether they ask for protection—it should be standard.

I hope no one else has to go...

Cville coffee is really close to home, walkable. It's good coffee, a quiet setting, generally, and only a bit overpriced, but reasonably: The food is good, and I usually get a breakfast burrito, about what you'd expect from Chipotle in the morning, about $8. Delicious coffee is sold by the cup with discounted refills. I can never resist the granola and honey baked bites at the register. I've had the sandwiches, (locally typical) brand name meat and kitchen prepped veg with house made organic aioli with three pepper mustard on whole grain locally sourced bread/wrap/bowl, et cetera, but you are really coming for the reading space, the scene, and the hush. A large children's area is separated from a quiet room, and I think there was some controversy about this with locals. I have no problem with kids, especially my own, but this seems to keep things quiet on the quiet side and lively on the kids side. The kind-if-understaffed kitchen in the back turns out tasty food after a little wait. I go there pretty regularly, and enjoy it every time. A good place to (over) hear what's going...

I would avoid this place all you can. This isn’t meant to be directed towards the staff, but whoever manages this shop. They clearly have not had proper training to run a Sunday morning shift as they were clearly new and uninformed with how the shop runs. We were not greeted by the two baristas after 10 mins of standing at the register. After seeing multiple customers become frustrated with wait time and being asked to pay twice, we should have left- that and the fact that a coffee shop has so many other items, you know the coffee wont actually be good. Iced latte took 20 mins, had hot steamed milk on it so the ice melted the whole drink, and was burnt completely with grounds in it for $6. The employee was new, so this is entirely a management problem with how they operate. Other employees were forgetting customers foods, switching orders up. Please train your employees and be present at the store during a Halloween Sunday morning when it will definitely be busy. Management non existent,...