French Press espresso bar — Restaurant in La Verne

This was my first time coming to this place, and I would love to give it another shot, but my experience the first time is making me hesitate....

The coffee I ordered a hot horchata latte, it was a perfectly fine tasting coffee, although it tasted nothing like Horchata.

Service the employee who severed me seemed to be having a bad day, she seemed annoyed and irritated. This employee was casually chatting with the customer in front of me, the employee was smiling and happily chatting with this customer. However as soon as she saw me, she turned towards me and her entire face changed. She frowned and looked incredibly annoyed to me it seemed the employee was irritated that she had to turn away from the customer she was chatting with to serve me. -employees voice sounded again very irritated. Short sentences with a low voice. no customer service small talk whatsoever

Overall I came in 20 minutes before closing, as a person who works on food service myself, I can understand staff might get irritated when customers walk in close to close time. I also understand the desire to chat with someone you know while working, we've all been there. However I strongly believe that employees should be able to keep their irritation to themselves and not make their customer feel disliked. I didn't even have a complicated order, just one small latte. Something else to add is while I was sitting there drinking my coffee all the employees came out to the front and had loud casual conversation, can't they do that in the back?

I want to go back and try a different coffee. However, I don't want to be treated as an annoyance while I'm there

Side note - there was an older gentleman employee who seemed very nice even though he never spoke to me. I wish he had...

DISCLAIMER: its been a few months (think 1/3 thru 2024) since I have actually been there, and am only now writing this review because I'm lazy AF, but everything I have written was true at the time.

I have been here like 3 times, twice with family, once with friends. The first two times were fine, and the rating might have been a 3 because everything (food, service, atmosphere) was not bad but not good. But the third and last time I went there is why I am rating it so low. First of all, food was okayyy def homemade vibes, meaning there was nothing special that you cannot do at home, but its still edible. However, DO NOT get the baked goods, that is not made in the store, they definitely buy it from elsewhere and leave it there for too long. The decor was interesting... not my taste but gave my eyes smth to look at. The worst thing was that SERVICE WAS NOT IT. They messed up orders for another table (gave my table the other table's order) and my table went to inform them. Yet, the server seemed annoyed at us?? she said in an exasperated tone "what's wrong?" and rolled her eyes. I can understand having a bad day, but rolling her eyes was unnecessary, especially when we were just trying to help. The other server was really loud, in what I thought was going to be a quiet cafe to chat with my friends but we could barely get a word out without hearing him yell, although you can't really blame him cuz I am pretty sure he was disabled. I brought my friends to check out the place, it was a MISTAKE to give them...

Stopped by as we passed through town. It seemed like they were still a new spot trying to figure things out. For instance, we ordered food and coffee. Coffee came out in a timely manner, but food took much longer even though we ordered pastries from the case (as opposed to food needing to be made). We did have two items warmed (ham & cheese croissant, bagel). I noticed a customer behind us was taken care of very promptly and received an open faced sandwich and coffee while we still waited. It also seemed that staff was unclear about who was responsible for certain food prep (like getting pastries out of cases). This was demonstrated while we waited and when our order was ready as we were nearly given duplicate items. Once this kinks are worked out, service would be better.

The coffee was well made. Not bitter. Cappuccino tasted more like a latte (due to milk and not much foam). The croissants (pistachio, ham and cheese) were a bit of a let down. Both were more bread like and did not have lamination consistently throughout. The pistachio was much more evident of this and, as a result, was heavy—both in weight and density.

There is ample parking. The sign is just a banner right now and you could miss it as it hangs down below the signs of...