Renaud's Bakery — Restaurant in Santa Barbara

“Breakfast is on me,” said Mike. I acted surprised for a moment before continuing to order an array of tiny desserts to go and an entire pie. “What time do you want to pick up the pie?” Asked the man behind the counter. I told him, and he informed me I could pick it up at Gelson’s, the grocery store a few door down on the day before thanksgiving. He told me the total and I double clicked my Apple Pay, scanning it over the click to pay spot. Denied. Shocked, I tried again with the same results. Then it dawned on me. The notification I had received a notification on my phone at 6:17am. It had woken me up. I had been sleeping, not adding auto renewing additional services on LegalZoom, so I immediately contacted the credit card company to dispute the charge. They hadn’t mentioned that they had locked my card. The man behind the counter looked at me impatiently and I turned to Mike. “I’ll pay you back.” I said. We finished ordering our breakfast and sat down to wait. The food arrived quick and cold, but we ate it anyway. A week later, it was the day before Thanksgiving, and I made my way to Gelsons to retrieve the pie. The place was packed, a type of crazed urgency hung in the air. Everyone was calm and courteous, but the tension was palpable with the invisible chaos of rich people. I braced myself and headed toward the bakery, where I waited in line. When it was my turn I told the girl my name. She flipped through the pages, scanning the list of dozens of names. Mine was nowhere to be found. I tried Mike’s name, still to no avail. I shrugged and grabbed one of the pies from the display and an orchid and continued onward to the checkout line. Two months later, my mother texted me at 8am. Her water heater had exploded and flooded her garage. I grabbed the carpet cleaner that my neighbor had given me after I helped her move, and hurried over to help. We spent an hour removing boxes from the garage and I used the carpet cleaner to suck up gallons of water from the floor. Luckily nothing was greatly damaged, I’ve seen much worse. My mother was grateful and insisted on taking me out to breakfast. She suggested Alysia bakery but I told her I didn’t want to go downtown. “Whereever you want to go!” Said my mother. “Renaud’s,” I said. On the drive over, the memory of the pie returned. We bypassed the self ordering and waited in line for the cashier, who was the same fellow who had assisted Mike and I. “Hey, I don’t know if you remember me…” I said, before telling him what happened with the pie. “I can’t do anything,” he said. I stared at him silently. “Maybe if you had come back like the next day we could have helped, but we can’t do anything now.” We then ordered our breakfast, which again arrived quick and cold but we ate anyway. It turned out that the Legalzoom charge was made by my now ex-roommate Imperial who is lucky that there’s a statute of...

This was the most horrible experience. Stopped on work break to get coffee and a cheese croissant. Waited for service while one of workers stood and did nothing and starred at line, turned out to be manager. Manager finally decided to help, so I ordered my coffee and cheese croissant. Apparently they did not take credit cards so had to go to Gelson's line. Got to Gelson's line and checked in my bag, it was a cinnamon roll NOT ham and cheese croissant. Went back to bakery the worker looked in bag and stated " Some of are ham and cheese croissants look like this", are you kidding me. The worker does not know the difference between a croissant and a cinnamon roll, wow! The worker informed me they are out, why was i not told this when ordering? He said he does not know how to refund and manager was not there. I said ok, well then you need to get me something else. He asked what and I said a bran muffin. He informed me he could not get the bran muffin he had to help someone with a cake. Watched him try and put a cake box together for ten min, not knowing how long this was gonna take the way it was going so went to Gelson's manage to go get refund. Thank god Gelson's manger was competent in getting my refund. Being a Santa Barbara native and have been going to Renaud's Restaurants for some time. I am so disappointed and shocked in their hiring of staff. DO...

The pastries are really wonderful!!! . The bran muffins are a delight which have real bran, plump raisins and bursting with flavor.

HOWEVER, I'm truly pizzled by tge quality of coffee served.. 😏

Unfortunately, if you are a serious coffee lover this is NOT the place. The drip decaf coffee is always either cold or stale. The expresso drinks are not worth the money because the coffee really lacks flavor and they, too are cold. The coffee served is called Peeless which Renaud really needs to think twice about serving serious coffee lovers.He needs something to something rich, full of flavor and most important, which is commensurate with the ❤️ love infused into the pastries. How can one not care about the harmony between coffee and pastries ? PLEASE HEAR MY...