Caribou Coffee — Restaurant in North Branch

The last three times I have been here I have left unhappy. Today I’m leaving this review in hopes management or someone will give a rip! So today is the second time this week I have ordered a warmed up croissant and it came out cold! At least it was wrapped this time, twice now it has just been thrown in the bag…gross and feels unsanitary. I order online and pickup I ordered my husband and my coffee both exactly the same with four sugars. They both came without a drop of sugar. This is a huge inconvenience for someone ordering online because now I have to go in and grab sugars myself, which defeats the purpose of drive thru or online ordering. Today there was a lot of employees and not many patrons but yet still a long wait only for my order to be wrong? Wow. I normally tip a couple to a few bucks every visit but now I will have to rethink even coming here since they don’t bother to fulfill the basics. What a disappointment after supporting this place! I noticed the owner responds to all negative reviews with the same generic response about checking in with this location, let’s hope they actually do...

Caribou is ok. I enjoy coffee, so I joke with my Minnesotan husband that when I’d like a coffee, I’ll choose somewhere else, but if I’d like my sugar with a splash of coffee, Caribou will do. The nitros and cold brews aren’t bad, though. The recent menu change is still disappointing— this location was a “Coffee and Bagels” and served delicious made-fresh Einstein Brothers sandwiches, and the Caribou pre-made sandwiches just cannot measure up. My orders are significantly less $ now that I can’t get a Farmhouse. (The Caribou version is not worth the effort of trying, unfortunately). The wait for drive thru used to be terrible almost every visit, with cars wrapped around the building. Now it usually moves quicker with less of a line, probably because the best part of the menu is gone. Today’s wait was unexpectedly awful again though. Took about half an hour from arrival in the drive thru line to driving away...

I would normally give this a 5 start rating. How can you ever go wrong with a bagel, a schmear, and a latte? It was 630pm on a Sunday night. The place closed at 7 pm. The young man (with no name tag on) was exasperated that we were there. We had been on the road for 8 hours and needed to stretch our legs before the final 2 1/2 hour push home and were happy about making really good time. He took a while to approach the register and when I said we were going to get 2 bagels he gave a huff. I saw that there weren't any plain bagels and said, "Oh bummer, I don't see any plain bagels. I'm not sure what I want yet." To which he snapped, "That's because we are out!". He pounded on the screen to put in our order, looked at his watch. Surely he was ready to leave but Dude, if you are working, WORK, and do your best, always.

The 'tude wasn't necessary and didn't help make the time to quicker. Bad bad service...