Bean Co Cafe — Restaurant in Maple Grove

This is a tough review. Bean Co Cafe, Maple Grove, has the very best beverages and food in town. Excellent quality, exotic flavor and very creative menu makes this place a must try and keeps us loyal. They have the potential to close down Starbucks but there's a major problem they have yet to address. The only reason I still go every other day without them improving their service is because of their Strawberry Banana Smoothie. Healthy and Incredible this smoothie is a morning must. Now back to the service issues, they have all the right ingredients to be great but service level is quite annoying. Their employees are courteous and prompt but ownership does not have them properly staffed. Many mornings our order is delayed as they have only one employee working the entire store. Grant it the employees have a great attitude but they need help to reduce overall wait time. Starbucks serves 8 cars on average for every car Bean Co serves. I actually counted one morning during long wait. The drive thru speaker needs removed and customers need to be redirected to the window to place order. They placed the speaker right next to the freeway causing a few minutes of going back and forth with I'm sorry can you repeat yourself, which also is annoying as you ultimately drive up and place the order at the window anyway. If you can't place an order due to freeway noise than remove the obstacle. Finally their reward program is almost non existent. They are still attached to white bear location. Cut the cord already. Do you all hear the frustration now. Bean Co needs to drop everything and fix their service issues and marketing programs and staffing struggles and then open back up to the public as their incredible menu and delicious food with the utmost quality is overshadowed by the stress between pulling up to drive thru and the time you leave. Fix this and you all have no competition as you're in an elite league of your own. I have never said that about a food establishment but their product is that good. *Update * it is with great pleasure to announce that I had the opportunity to speak with the owner. He is incredibly kind and intelligent and I'm leaving my original post up so you can see there's always two sides to a story. The owner has shared he is constantly working on certain issues that can't be fixed overnight. He was also very passionate about his establishment and the community. I will say it was not fair of me to call out the issues without getting the entire story first. We can all learn from this. So I highly recommend everyone to stop by and support Bean Co as Maple Grove is blessed to have them and the community must support great establishments like this one or lose them to the same old boring...

Our experience here was odd and a little uncomfortable. First, this coffee shop is attached to some sort of bank/financial institution. It is not only attached but is an open space into a corporate bank with a guy sitting right there in the middle waiting for bank customers which felt strange.

If you're coming here for coffee as we did, the flavors are limited. My partner got a pistachio latte frappe. He was not asked about type of milk and they assumed he didn't want whip on top but never asked. My vanilla latte was ok.

We didn't try the food but it looked appetizing and beautifully made. One croissant was $12 and had gold edible flecks. Unique, but pricey.

Last, the pickup area for food and drink is stuck within a small space - between a counter and a pillar. Crepes were being readied right next to where customers pick up their food and drink with no food safety guard between.

We tried it with no desire...

Today I ventured to #maplegrovemn to meet a good friend for coffee. She's just as much of a coffee enthusiast as I am and we were both excited to try this place for the first time. I had seen a tiktok video of this place and knew it was a place that I would enjoy.

First off, the pastries. Every single one of them looked absolutely scrumptious. I asked if they are made in house, and they are!

They almost look too beautiful to eat.

I chose an oatmeal bowl, and my friend had a crepe. We both had iced lattes, which is my typical coffee of choice.

This place gets BUSY. When we arrived a little before 9am, there were people sitting bit still plenty of seating to choose from. About 40 minutes after there wasn't an empty seat in the lobby and people were standing waiting for tables to open up. There is a nice patio area that will be nice to enjoy once the weather warms up. We both agreed that we'd like...