Red Bay Coffee Roastery — Restaurant in Oakland

Their coffee is good - not the best I've had but to be fair I've only tried one flavor yet. If you're going to buy coffee on the spot - you can stop reading the review. If you plan on using their delivery service - read on (the TL;DR is it's horrible, like other delivery service reviewers have mentioned). I first tried their subscription service, weekly bag in the mail. First week delivered on time. Second week went missing. Useless customer service assured me it's on the way, it's being prepped, give it 3-5 business days yada yada. After insisting that it wasn't delivered, lo and behold - the 2nd bag arrived together on the same shipment with the 3rd bag, so effectively delayed by a week. OK - I thought I'd try buying several bags at once so I have coffee despite their inconsistencies. Same story - "label created", "shipment awaiting" all sorts of weird status and customer service assures me it's on the way. Today it arrived, 2 weeks after the order was placed - and this to ship from Oakland to the South Bay... I can walk that distance faster! I appreciate it's a local business etc and really want to support them, but please don't offer a shipping service (and useless customer service that just says "it's all good") if you can't handle the logistics. Coffee delivery is useless if I have to keep going to Safeway to buy some beans until your shipment comes around. P.S. another point about customer service: throughout they kept reminding me that the website says order can take between 3-5 business days to ship. They kept saying that even after 8 business days have passed and nothing shipped. Like I said, customer service is...

Incredible... I have always drank esspresso, being a chef for work purposes on early or late assignments, so I respect coffee but never considered myself a coffee drinker. But being a chef we speak flavor profiles ect, so easy transition if one would want to. I tried one of my first indi/micro roasters Augies in the IE of SoCal few months ago, and I instantly knew I would try a local roaster wherever I go from now on, I would indiscriminately goto star-bigbucks or dunkinNopenutes, but for now on only in absence of a local roaster or when expands started truely local. I've since tasted many strands and roast of beans. Red bay Blew Augie's away. I ordered their coffee and esspresso. Tasted each seperate. With and without sweetener and light cream. They provide you with soda water to refresh your palate. Real China is their plate and cupware. Very contemporary modern casual artsy approachable sophisticated vibe. Love it. Camt wait to see the sattelite stores. I will return and will be ordering beans, I'm a fan. Great Job Redbay, service at counter was great. Staff knowledgable. And if I see the owner or whoever that was teaching that lil girl of hers whatever skills she was that day again in proper fashion I'm going to throw all of my money at Redbay. Great atmosphere staff looks very happy, and roasting live in living color. Great brand and quality Starbucks cant...

I used to be loyal customer for Red Bay Coffee, but my recent experience of purchasing coffee beans from their website totally disappointed, in a way I will never ever purchase any stuff from this brand. TLDR - their shipping is extreme delayed and no communication from customer service.

Timeline: Sep 10: order 3 bags of coffee Sep 17: I only received 2 bags of coffee, report to their customer service email on the same day. Sep 26: Got response from them after I sent over reminder TWICE. First time when they replied, they even didn't read my email, simply saying that my order is delivered. I need to re-specify my request again they finally understand what happened. Sep 28: Carrier shows that package is damaged and need to contact sender. Oct 3: As of now, NO RESPONSE from red bay coffee.

I spent so much time in communication and end up I decided to spend 2 mins to dispute from bank and got my $$ back. Is it worthy for all of the communication, just to ask for 20 bucks? Coz I don't want to loss hope to one of my favorite local coffee roasters. But this is beyond my limit, I completely disappointed, and want to share my experience to warn the future customer who wanna purchase coffee beans from...