The Southern Grind at INDIGO — Restaurant in Orange Beach

This place is very deceiving at first glance. Cute decor and quite cozy. Their home made coffee flavors are to die for and yes I spent $15 to bring some home!! HOWEVER… the service is terrible, the wait is ridiculous, the overall flow of how things go needs serious help. If you want to stay and eat, you wait in a line only to finally get to the counter and be told there is a 45min to an hour wait for food!! At that point, you do what anyone would do and order food hoping the girls at the front are wrong. Yes it’s spring break and yes most everywhere has an hour or better wait for brunch. But a little info goes a long way when you walk in not when you wait to wait some more. When you are a business owner and you are in a destination location, you should have everyone you have on the payroll working. There should be more than 2 people making coffee, and there should be someone cleaning tables. All you need is a couple people as wait staff to sit people, take food orders, and make sure your dining area is clean. Then the line for coffee can be strictly for coffee and gelato. This way the coffee freaks get their coffee in a timely manner and the people eating are taken care of. Don’t mess with people’s coffee, it can be dangerous!! There was not one table that was clean! So I did what anyone would do, I cleaned a space for my family and me to eat and the observations began. The others like us waiting for food because they were caught in the line like us, looked very unhappy. There was at least one full table per day that was getting their food comp’d for the lack of service and the wait times. We stayed at the indigo so we came through here a lot!! The girls behind the counter are so rude and I’m sorry to say this but dumb! You might need to be cognizant that there are multiple people with the same name in the same place. A few tweaks here and there would make this place sing!! But the first place to start is your staff. Nice, smart, quick on their feet, problem-solvers, and patient are all great qualities for food service!!! You want to sell more decor? Make it easy to come in and WANT to stay awhile, not leave super angry, or they will never come back or even trust...

I am soooo outdone with the owners of this place right now. Have been getting coffee from here every year since 2016 on my trips to OB. My sister and brother in law own a condo in OB and go numerous times throughout the year. I always ask them to pick some coffee up for me and bring it back. NEVER again! This is the second weekend in a row that my sister has gone in to try and by 5 pounds of coffee for me, only to be told that the owner won't allow it because they would have to pull from their "store stock" that they use to make drinks. I thought you made your own coffee, so I don't understand this. So, my brother in law said "you have it on the shelf in individual bags for sale, so why not take some of those bags to make up the 5 pounds?". He was told that the owners wanted their customers to buy the individual bags instead, because they cost more. That's pretty sorry to do your customers that way, if you ask me! Furthermore, if I am standing in front of you paying you more than $60 for ONE purchase and am a returning customer, WHY in the world would you turn away that sale? This is extremely poor business practice! She told my brother in law that we could order it online instead and pay for shipping. I am not about to pay you people 20 dollars for shipping when I am already buying $60 worth of coffee! Firstly, the shipping should be free if purchasing over $50. Secondly, $20 for shipping is ridiculous. I'm sure most of that shipping cost is to line your pocket rather than actual shipping. Again, pretty shady to make your customers do this. Also, what is the difference in me placing an online order versus ordering it right there in YOUR store?! I have news for you people, your coffee isn't THAT good. This is just absolutely ridiculous, all the way around! To add to this, my sister told the girl last weekend to go ahead and place the order and she would pick it up this weekend. When my sister went to get it today, she didn't have it! My sister had also emailed her to remind her. She claimed she didn't get the email. Poor, poor, poor business practice! Our large family that has regularly used you on our regular trips to OB will take our...

Edit- Just wanted to add that the owner was exceptionally kind as seen in the response below and more than willing to make it right. I look forward to visiting again on future vacations!

Definitely a cute spot and the coffee drinks are okay, depending on what you get. I’ve been here ant least once or twice every time I travel to the area and it has always been great. But the service has been pretty bad this time. It seems like most of the employees are very new and none of them are very friendly. No smile or “hey, welcome in.” Just blank stares and minimal speaking. That’s not really the problem though- I ordered an affogato which is a scoop of ice cream/gelato and a shot of espresso poured over. To my knowledge, you’re supposed to put the ice cream in a cup and then pour the espresso very slowly around the side of the cup and then a little on top so it won’t melt the ice cream and it’ll cool off. That’s really the only way I’ve ever seen it done and all that comes up when I google it… But the barista dumped the espresso into the cup and it melted all the ice cream and left me with about 4oz of a milky, lukewarm mess with cookie crumbs floating in the top. Some ice cream is expected to melt obviously, but not the entire thing before it’s even handed to you. I hate to be stingy but for $8.99 I wish there would have been at least just a little bit of ice cream still in the cup. I let another employee know, not that he seemed to care, and ended up just paying for a scoop of ice cream by itself and it was great! I also really enjoy the cold brew. I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon,...