Ithaca Bakery — Restaurant in City of Ithaca

How do you not know what non-dairy milk is, as a barista at a cafe in Ithaca? No, skim is still cow milk, but small plus for having oat milk on-tap at the self-serve kiosk. (Even if the staff member directing me to it believed that "oat" is a flavor of dairy milk.)

This is my second time there and it was worst than the first; I had attributed most of the difficulty due to pandemic adjustments last summer, but no, this seems to be the way they want to do business.

When you first walk in, it is a clstrfk of people, signage, and products. There's seemingly four or five separate counters, three coolers distributed throughout the store, and seating or line space everywhere else. Lineflow management is practically nonexistent, leading to 5-10 people minimum milling around, either waiting to pick up, pay, order, or try to actually look at the products or menu boards. You pay at a seperate station from where you order, and you order sandwiches, pastries, and drinks at seperate orders. While most of the staff is pleasant, I feel that they, too, are struggling to keep some semblance of structure both behind the counter and in front.

Okay, here are the perks: big but simple menu, vegan and vegetarian options; focus on organic, then local ingredients; service is pretty fast considering how packed it usually seems. Lots of sanitizer stations, barriers between seating, and outdoor (covered!) dining, as well as curbside pick up. I like the food, wish the coffee was better (it's ok, the blend just isn't my taste), like the location.

But the standing issue seems to be that at some point, they decided to do too much with not enough room, and undervalued their popularity, both with locals and the college crowd. This makes the entire experience of grabbing a coffee and a sandwich into a cacophony nightmare ordeal, and I'll probably be skipping this spot on...

I had a horrendous experience paying for a breakfast pastry at Ithaca Bakery yesterday. I asked the cash register clerk the price of the unmarked blueberry cake from a shelf and she said it was $12.95 and I then inserted my cc. The screen then showed a charge of $14.77 and she handed me my receipt. I told the clerk I didn't know there was tax on pastries and she said "no" it was a tip. She then explained that the system had automatically added the tip and that there should have been an opt out that I apparently didn't see. She called a manager over to remove the tip and, as it was clear that I was annoyed by what had happened, she testily said "it's on you," apparently because I had missed the fine print with the opt out option. As a final insult, as I left the shop one of them made a snarky comment about me not wanting to tip. So the new default practice at IB is apparently that a tip is automatically added on all cc purchases unless you catch the fine print and opt out, and this includes purchases that often take about 30 seconds to ring up . I for one think the prices at IB are high enough that they can pay their staff decently without the need to shake down their customers and I'll be buying the very good $7.00 Entemann's crumb cake at P&C at Easthill Plaza for the...

I really looked forward to going to Ithaca Bakery for the first time. I was visiting Ithaca. This was on either 10/10/19, or 10/11, early evening. I wanted to eat dinner and have a glass of wine. I walked in and stood at the counter. There were three staff persons behind the counter and not one of them even acknowledged my presence. One, a man who was restocking the drink cooler on the far right side of the bar, made eye contact with me and still did not acknowledge me in any way. He then proceeded to wait on a man who had just walked up to the counter. I waited for nine minutes like that and then walked out. Im not even an impatient person and this staff behavior felt disrespectful to me. The baked goods looked incredible but if staff do not know enough to greet you and wait on you what good is great food? (I am 66 years old. Was this agism?) Years ago, I worked in the restaurant business as a server for over ten years. To treat customers as though they are not important enough to even acknowledge is very bad practice. Even if a server is busy, say hello with a smile and let customers know that you will wait on them as soon as possible. Is that too much to expect? I was seriously dissatisfied with my experience at...