Rose Gold Tea Labs — Restaurant in Pinellas Park

The wait times are unreasonable, making ordering anything from this cafe not worth it.

Today Rose Gold Tea Labs opened at 11am. I arrived at 11:26am. I waited in line until I reached the cashier at 11:51am at which point I learned there was a two hour (!!!) wait for fluffcakes. I placed an order for boba instead and received my boba at 12:04pm.

Let's break this down - in just under an hour of time being open, they were unable to keep up with their pace of orders such that they have a running two hour wait time (an amount that will only balloon as they continue to accept new orders throughout the day). There's no way to find this out until you've already committed a decent chunk of time waiting in line (some of which is spent outdoors in the Florida heat) (for me, 25 total minutes of wait time). The rebuttal to this is "well, they have a callback list so you don't have to wait on site for two hours" but not everyone lives close enough to make a wait list feasible. Many of the people in line bailed empty handed once they heard the wait time.

The interior is millennial pink/rose gold with small tables, but I'm not sure any kind of cute environment can save your vibe when there are unhappy looking sweaty people queuing through the center of the cafe and standing around in between tables waiting for drinks. The cafe has fans set up (much appreciated) but I was literally dripping sweat by the time I got inside and had sweat pooling in my flip flops from the wait outside.

My drink (brown sugar creme brulee with boba) was good but not worth a 38 minute wait. I did not get a fluffcake due to wait times.

I don't want this to be a 100% complaining review without suggestions of how to do better, so here are some suggestions to improve. At the bare minimum they need a way to inform people in line about the wait time for fluffcakes, whether that is a digital sign board in the window visible from outside or an employee walking the line making announcements. Adding a second cashier station would dramatically speed up the line. If they had a person with a tablet walking the line to take orders and get the beverage-only people on their way that would also help with the overcrowding. I'm not sure why fluffcakes are only offered on the weekends but it feels like an artificial scarcity situation. Offering fluffcakes every day would help reduce the burden on the cafe and reduce wait times. Lastly, there's no way around it - they absolutely must scale the operation in order to make this functional, so I'm not sure if it's the mixing, the cooking, or the topping of the fluffcakes that is the bottleneck but they need to take a long hard look at what's the limiting factor and adjust accordingly. Maybe this should be an order counter only with no indoor dining space so they can double their cook stations? I don't know. But please, for gods sake let your potential customers know about the wait time before they spend 25...

Got there early to wait in line for the soufflé pancakes and was sorely disappointed. They tasted way too much like egg. Basically, it tasted like I was eating microwaved eggs with a little syrup and powdered sugar. I ate most of it because I traveled 2 hours to try it but I couldn't even finish it.

Also, why do they skimp so much on the syrup?? They give you like a quarter of a tiny container and shoo you away.

Also, lack of seating inside meant eating in my car.

Overall, just a negative, highly disappointing experience.

EDIT: I have had these pancakes before elsewhere and they do not taste so much of egg. I'm sorry to leave a bad review because I know your business relies on good reviews, but I believe these fluffy pancakes are not being made correctly.

Also, please ensure there is a policy to keep customers in line from saving seats. I was third in line last week and someone 15 spots behind me was allowed to place their keys and phone on one of the very few tables to save it. The table sat unused for almost 30 minutes while I was forced to eat in my car. Someone should not be allowed to do that. It is unfair for the guests who get there early and are served first.

I will say the strawberry tea I had...

Pretty rare I write negative reviews…but this place deserves it. Walked in and we were 3rd in line. We waited in line approx. 15 minutes bc the lady had a problem with card. It took the staff 15 minutes to figure out they need to let other people go in front of her. We wanted a single pancake which believe it or not there is no pricing on the pancakes, even though there is pricing on everything else on the menu, which is annoying. After ordering, it took about 45 minutes to get our single pancake. Overall, this was a very negative experience because if the pancakes take that long, they should just have a little note on the menu that they take an extended amount of time for pancakes. We received no updates during the 45 minutes, which was unprofessional in my opinion. After about 45 minutes, when we still hadn’t received our pancake we asked the staff can you notify people on how long their pancakes take and the staff responded with “OK” but didn’t say anything else. The pancake was decent though unfortunately the staff have low situational awareness. The pancake was good but for $10 and that amount of waiting, will not...