Leaves 'n Beans Coffee — Restaurant in Pekin

Review Date: May 22nd, 2021

These leaves and beans are sprouting up everywhere!

It’s always a pleasant surprise when a local business opens up a new location. With Leaves ‘n Beans, it wasn’t a huge surprise to see they opened yet another location, this time in Pekin. Personally, I have found Pekin to be lacking good coffeehouses so it was a pleasant surprise to see them get a Peoria-based legend. This location opened in April 2021 and I wasted no time in checking it out.

Maria and I popped in on a sunny and extremely hot Saturday afternoon. I was surprised to see the place empty. I figured with the weather finally playing nice, this place would be busy with kids getting sugary drinks, some end-of-semester college students cramming in for finals (unless they already took them), and people just out and about. Nope. Maria and I had the place to ourselves for the later part of the afternoon. There was the occasional person stopping in and their drive-thru had a few visitors.

The staff was super friendly in taking my order and they even brought my order out to me after telling me to pick it up at the end… I ended up wandering from the ‘pick up’ area to look at the art on the opposite wall while I waited. My drink of choice wasn’t a bitter black coffee like I’ve been ordering lately. With the weather being generally awful as of late, I needed something to perk me up and I picked the ‘Sugar Daddy’ to do just that. This is the first time I ordered this at a Leaves ‘n Beans and it was pretty good. I don’t remember what makes up the ‘Sugar Daddy’ besides it being a latte. Maybe it was caramel and… hazelnut? That sounds about right but don’t quote me on that. Either way, it was just the thing I needed on this sunny and hot afternoon. I also grabbed a chocolate chip cookie from their selection of baked goods. The cookie itself was decent. Nothing to write home about but it went well with my drink.

As is typical for me, they do offer a food menu but I wasn’t hungry enough to order something from it.

The interior of this Leaves ‘n Beans location was two things. Larger than I expected and nicer than I anticipated. As I walked in, I was impressed with the size of the ‘dining area’ and how it was laid out. There is plenty of space for people to sit without sitting too close to the next table. There was also this cozy little nook heading back towards the bathroom that would be perfect for a small group of friends to sit there for some privacy. On the wall between the register and the pick up area was a nicely crafted wood wall with Pekin in metal letters and the company logo above it. You can see it above and below. It is a very nice touch to the overall aesthetics of the coffeehouse.

Truth be told, the building its located in has seen better days and had some empty retail spots. I almost didn’t believe this was were the place was located because from the road, it looked nearly empty and abandoned but sure enough, there was coffee located on the right side of this little strip. I am not too familiar with Pekin but I do hope that this location brings in some foot traffic to the area and becomes a thriving strip of stores.

Pekin, do your best to support this place so you all have an actual place to get coffee that isn’t McDonald’s or maybe that...

Came back to try this place today after it reopened on the weekends again. I'm not sure what is going on at this place. We arrived and ordered at 9:15am. We also wanted to use a coupon that had been sent to us as a "come back and try us special". The girl working the register couldn't find the spot to enter the code and neither could the other person behind the counter. Instead of waiting we just told her to forget about it and we'd use it another day. We had an iced Americano, two cold brews, two sandwiches and a veggie quesadilla. We sat with our party and waited for our order. Our party started to get their drinks about 20m after their order and then the food was a good 30-40m after they ordered. In total we waited an hour for our coffee and food. One of the drinks on the ticket did not arrive and when I went to the counter they had no idea that we were waiting on another drink and the ticket must have been "tossed".

I must say I don't quite understand what would take an hour with our order. Even one of the girls behind the counter who came in for a shift mentioned the long wait time. The food was okay, and hot. Drinks were tasty, but waiting an hour for coffee and a breakfast sandwich just makes no logical sense. I think the staff needs to be trained to work ahead/on multiple tickets at once. Definitely seems like every time I've been here they are working on one drink on one ticket at a time. I wanted to like this place as it is a local business but the service quality is really sub par and it doesn't seem like the extended training did much to cause the store to run more...

I finally got to go into leaves 'n beans at the Pekin location. I have now officially been to four of them in the surrounding towns. Alex was the assistant manager that was on duty this day and he was very friendly and good with conversation. He greeted us right when we walked in the door and asked if he could help us with our order. I was talking to him about how I had visited the other leaves 'n beans and that I had never been to this one before. I was telling him how nice and cozy this location was and that they did a good job decorating it. I like how you place the order and then you move down to the second area to pick up your order. I believe he was training somebody this day. I loved how much she was paying attention and how she made my coffee perfectly, I was very pleased! Now that I've been to this location, I was able to see how great it is. I think I'll be coming here a lot more often. Thank you for the great customer service and the...