Bright Side — Restaurant in New York

This place might be decent if it weren't for a rotten and very petty female barista here.

I live in the area and walk my dog to the N 4th Ferry Pier most mornings and although the coffee isn't superb, it's decent. It's an Aussie owned business, which I liked to support because I'm Aussie, (if I'm being super honest usually Aussie cafe coffee standards are higher than this but it was fine).

Like a lot of cafes, they have the stamp cards you collect where you buy 9 and you get the 10th free. I forget them sometimes on my morning coffee runs because I get out of bed and get my dog and go with only my phone. So, sometimes I start a new card or the next visit I ask for them to add two stamps at once to make up for the time I didn't bring it.

There was one time though that I encountered that female barista who has dark brown hair and I told her I'd forgotten to get yesterday's coffee stamp. She told me "Fine, I'm going to trust you on this." I took it as a joke and replied: "Don't worry, I'm a super trustworthy person."

Weeks pass, loads of coffees later, it's her again at the counter. I didn't get the stamp for the two visits before. There was the day before by myself and the visit where I took 3 people to the cafe. Technically could've asked for 5 stamps, right, but I only asked for one stamp from yesterday and for the new one I'm ordering. This barista looks at me and says "This happens with you a lot, doesn't it?" with a really gross tone. I was startled and I replied trying to laugh it off, "Yeah, it does. I have like four cards at home."

After thinking about it for a minute, I started to feel really insulted. Was she really insinuating I'm trying to cheat the cafe out of 1/9th of a coffee? On one hand, she can recognize me enough to know I frequent the place but she still wanted to act super stingy and suggest I'm a liar trying to exploit the cafe. For every time I come in, there's a few times I could've asked for a stamp and didn't.

After waiting for the coffee and collecting my thoughts a bit, I said to the barista when I picked up the coffee, maybe you should have an app that tracks it like a lot of other cafes do.

That would make sense right? If you're so concerned about people cheating 1/9th of a coffee and don't believe your regular patrons.

I ended up emailing the founder Luke to ask about that experience and never heard back, so doesn't seem like they care about their customers getting treated poorly.

And just for comparison's sake, Hungry Ghost for instance is always super easy about their stamp cards. One time I said I forgotten yesterday's stamp and the barista gave me 2. I said that's too many and they said it's all good. What a difference in customer service.

Truly, the only main upside of Brightside was the location and it's a cute enough cafe decor wise. But stingy is not a good look. If you treat people like that, I will walk the extra 3 blocks to go to Blue Bottle and Hungry Ghost instead. There are countless cafes in this neighborhood. Why do people...

I was really excited to try this spot before work and ordered an iced spiced maple coffee (it’s 75 cents extra, so I thought it would be fun to try something unique). I sat patiently for 10 minutes while several customers who came in after me were served their coffee, food, and given warm attention. Meanwhile, I was just a girl, standing in front of a counter, waiting for her $7+ coffee.

Wanting to give the café the benefit of the doubt, I got back in line to check on my order. The response was a quick, mumbled apology and confirmation of what I had ordered. When it finally arrived, the drink was nothing like what was advertised — just a basic latte with some cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top.

I completely understand that everyone has different personalities and busy moments, but it was hard not to notice the contrast in kindness and attentiveness between how other customers were treated and how I was treated. For the price and the hype, the experience fell flat.

In the end, the brightest side of my visit was the neon light display...

Highly recommend avoiding this place. The staff are the most unhelpful, unfriendly and painfully slow bunch of people. It’s as if being as rude and unhelpful and inefficient as possible are pre required qualities for applying for a job there. I went to get two smoothies this morning. Asked if they could add blueberries to one smoothie for me. The two staff members on duty stared blankly at me as if they couldn’t even comprehend being asked to do something outside of the box. I asked again as was confused by their blank stares, the male staff member shakes his head followed by the woman saying “we can take stuff out we can’t add stuff in”. Just unbelievably unaccommodating and unpleasant people to deal with. This is just one example of a bad experience getting food and drinks from this place. Friends and family have gone there while they’ve been in the neighborhood visiting and all have said the exact same thing. Coffee is also terrible. Avoid...