Cole's Bakery & Cafe — Restaurant in Spokane

We had a mixed experience here. When I discovered Cole's I was over the moon happy that I could eat everything there without worry, so I imagined going there very often to eat. But our first experience so far was super mixed. When we walked in we were waiting to be greeted for a while! They were not busy. Then once we were sat at our table we waited for a very long time for anyone to come greet us at all or take our order. The food came out and my husband really liked his breakfast meal, but I got the coconut chicken strips and they were soooooo very overcooked and dry. Like zero moisture left at all. The rest of our food was cooked fine but sadly it was all very underwhelming and just ok, lacked flavor/was bland, and was not very exciting or anything we'd want to come back for. It is really sad to even write this review because I think their concept is amazing and has better potential! Many of the baked goods we bought were outstanding, and some things, namely the donuts, were an off flavor and texture, even though they looked amazing. The cinnamon roll was one of the best we ever had. We spent $100 and several things ended up in the trash because they weren't good, so that was disappointing. We will still come back and try again. I just think the food menu really needs to be re-imagined by a more experienced and skilled chef, and they could come up with better cooking techniques and better, more developed flavors. The baked goods are pretty good, except for the donuts IMO. Update: we gave it a second shot and had the same experience. Very slow service, despite not being busy. Food was just OK, not great. Baked goods were not very good this time and one tasted and smelled so bad, it was inedible. We called and told them and the manager was supposed to call us back, and now 2 weeks later still no call to make it right. We decided not to go back again because most of the baked goods we have purchased ended up in the trash and the meals just aren't anything we want to go back for. Super disappointed because, again, it has such better potential and could be great under...

I’ve been a loyal Cole’s customer for awhile but they have now lost my business solely due to their customer service. I placed an order for pick up and had a friend pick it up for me because I have a 5 month old and couldn’t leave my house. My order was wrong and I tried to call the store to voice the error, and no one answered the phone for over 45 minutes. I sent a message to their Instagram account and sent them an email, attempting all the avenues I could to get ahold of the store and no one could answer me. Due to having a young child and being incredibly hungry, I ate the food anyways. I tried to call 2 hours later and someone finally answered, and they said they could only refund me half of my order because I still ate it.

When I told them I tried to call, email and message on Instagram, I was met with the typical “we’re short staffed and we’re very busy”. What pushed me over the edge was the comment that “due to the needs of the business we can’t be giving food away for free so it’s only fair to the business to give you half.” Gluten free food is expensive and I understand having profit margins, but customer service needs to be a priority and it clearly is not. Business 101: you eat the cost when you make a mistake.

What business justifies its cost needs when they messed up my order and didn’t answer their phone? And when I tried multiple avenues to contact them? When I asked them what else I could have done in this situation, they said “it sounds like there’s nothing you could have done here but what’s most fair to us is to give you half.” That fact that a business is ok with an answer like that is honestly embarrassing. This place has so many bad reviews for customer service but clearly doesn’t care because it’s still awful.

Since this is one of the only GF place in Spokane, I think they know they have something no one else has, so they don’t really care to change their customer service because they know people will come back because Celiacs don’t have a choice. Vote with your dollar and go somewhere else, there’s other places with GF food even if it’s...

First time was the last time. Ordered two orders of avocado toast and was surprised to get served a SINGLE piece for each order. I’ve never seen a single piece of any kind of toast served in any restaurant. Checked the menu and sure enough, that’s what it said so I let it go. My piece of ’toast’ wasn’t even that great, it was soggy and drooped down as you ate it (I’ve ordered avocado toast from other places many times and never had this issue). Then came time to pay the bill and for the 2x orders (or, pieces) of avocado toast, an order of dirty fries and a piece of cake I was told it was $49.06. The menu said the toast was $7, the dirty fries were $14 and the piece of cake was about $5 so it should’ve been $33 before tax. I said there must be a mistake. I was told I should’ve regarded a relatively small, white, semi-faded sticker on top of the menu that said ‘food prices have gone up so we’re charging an extra $2 - $4’ which I admittedly missed. I said that it wasn’t very fair to not charge the prices on the menu and was basically told too bad and that ‘it wasn’t an issue for anyone else’ (funny, I’ve never had this issue anyWHERE else). I suggested a couple of the numerous ways that the apparent misunderstanding could’ve been avoided, such as mentioning the price increases while handing us the menus or actually changing the prices on the menus. ‘Ya, well then we’d have to change 70 menus,’ I was told. Not my problem. Take a sharpie to the prices. Print out some new ones on regular paper until you can afford new shiny ones. It’s your business, take some responsibility. As I mentioned, the stickers that were supposed to justify all of this were a bit faded implying that they’ve been around for a bit so you’ve had time to take care of the issue. I’ve seen this type of thing on Reddit; having prices next to the food but having a message elsewhere on the menu that basically says ‘we’ll charge whatever we want’. As you’d probably suspect, turns out people are NOT fans of this. It’s sneaky and disrespectful. Definitely won’t be going there again and I do NOT...