The Bean Bar Co. — Restaurant in Tampa

Very nice customer service experience but subpar food leads this coffee shop to be a simply there for coffee.

I came here for Sunday Brunch and decided to treat my friends to food with some Groupons they offered! I was excited to try it because the food looked pretty good on the Yelp page! Unfortunately, they were out of the croissant egg sandwich, avocado toast and chicken and waffle sandwich- which is all what we went there for. So we instead opted to try out the below. The food took quite some time to come out but management was very apologetic about that. The girls upfront were very kind and welcoming. Without the Groupon this was all a $60+ meal (4 drinks, 3 bagels, 3 empanadas, 1 croissant & 1 egg white bite), with it it was $30.

Iced Almond Milk Latte with Vanilla- delicious espresso mixed with a creamier than usual almond milk. This was my friends drink and she rated it 4/5

Iced americano- a good standard americano. This was bitter for me but good for my friend who ordered it. He would have rated it 3.5/5

Chai latte- my friend thought this was very sweet, he saw the premade mixture being poured into the cup. It was heavy on the cinnamon flavour. I thought it was a nice taste but he rated it 3/5.

Iced oat milk latte with sugar free hazelnut- I thought this was a really good latte! The espresso wasn’t bitter and the oat milk was nice and creamy. The sugar free hazelnut added a nice touch. 4.5/5

Plain bagel- it was served nice , crispy and hot with only 1 small packet of cream cheese. My gripe about this is the fact that it’s literally served with only 1 packet of cream cheese which barely just covers one slice of the bagel. You have to pay $0.50 per extra packet. Now if it came with 2 cream cheese packets, and I had to pay for an extra one, I can understand that, but there’s not enough cream cheese in that to barely sustain 1 slice. It’s also not a cheap bagel at $3.25 so I would at least expect enough cream cheese with it. After my shock they gave us the extra cream cheese per bagel we ordered for free. So I appreciated that from the friendly staff- I was ready to pay the $1.50 (we ordered 3 bagels) to comply with their business practice but was not happy about it. 3/5

Everything Bagel- a good crispy bagel but again, let down by the cream cheese packet issue. I hope they correct it after this review. 3/5

Butter crossant- a nice warm standard flaky croissant that my friend ordered with cream cheese. 1 packet was enough here :P 4/5

Beef empanada- I definitely was not a fan of this. The empanada dough was extremely dry, the mixture was heavy on the potato and low on the seasoning. Would not recommend. 1/5

Spinach and roasted pepper Egg white egg bites- everyone was not a fan of this. The spinach was unseasoned so it was bitter, the bites were watery, not moist. Would not...

After today, I won't be coming back.

If the owners are reading this: Please, do yourself a favor and hire better help. I've given this location a 2nd, 3rd and now a 4th (and final) chance after some amateur level mistakes. The continued problems just tell me that the people working there don't care about what they're sending out and neither do the owners (Hey, you got your money, right?). This is evident in the staff turnaround since it's almost never the same people working there when I go.

One thing I've almost always dealt with was slow service and poor communication. The former isn't a deal breaker to me usually, however what has happened multiple times now is I'll place a takeout order, get a text that it's ready for pickup, then when I show up I'll get told it's actually not ready and be forced to wait around when I'm in a hurry.

The drinks have always been at least decent. For anyone that hasn't been: Do yourself a favor and go in-person or call in your order to be very specific with the barista about your drinks. Even then though, your mileage may vary. Only once was my drink order messed up after giving instructions but it was such an easy add-on (how hard is it to add a single shot to a drink?). Other times I've ordered well known, easy to make coffee drinks and the taste has varied.

The food is truly hit or miss, and the biggest problem for me. It's mainly due to the people working there. If they gave a damn, they would know better than to send out food that was over/under-cooked or incomplete. The food was always good the first few times I went. After what was probably my 6th visit or so, it's been a steep decline. I've gotten under-cooked chicken with the Chicken/Waffle item, over-cooked breakfast sandwich (as if someone flame broiled the croissant after putting the egg and cheese on), missing items in my order or poorly prepared items (the breakfast sandwich is quite bland without the aioli yet today was the 3rd time I've gotten it without it), and finally the criminally small portions for the price. $8 for a single donut that is the size of a cookie? I wouldn't have ordered it if the menu item wasn't so misleading (worded as if you get multiple for the price). You should be ashamed of yourselves for pricing these so high and essentially lying to customers when the menu item has this pluralized as if you get multiple donuts for the price. If I was supposed to get more than 1 for the price, than your staff has again screwed up a very simple...

It was our first time there, so we did not know what to expect. Boy were we pleasantly surprised! The latte and cappuccino that we had were both delicious, along with the cinnamon muffins. Yum! One of the owners with which we spoke was most cordial, friendly, and took the time to explain their venue to us. Looking forward to our next visit!

Since it has now been one year since my last review, I thought I would follow up to see if my initial thoughts were still valid...

So here they are...

Let me first say two things: I am now a regular customer and also a retired manager who had a staff the served customers, so each time my wife and I come in, I sit and observe the staff’s interactions with each customer, which is the basis for my review.

Now to the review: I once again gave 5 stars (which I do not often do for multiple reasons).

The staff is still very knowledgeable about their products. They have a myriad of combinations of coffee, both hot and cold; smoothies; and over 30 different flavors, and they know exactly what to put in each order. The staff can multi-task. Each person not only does the barista job in making all of the coffees, espressos, smoothies, and other drinks, but also take the customer orders, take Uber calls, customer calls, and even work the back of house to make the food orders, all while smiling and being polite to customers. They can even speak to the customers sitting at the counter while making the coffee and smoothie orders, without missing a beat. Great balance between speed and quality of product. It takes effort and time to produce a quality espresso product, so it is important to take time to be sure that the quality and consistency is there, all the while trying to be as expedient as possible. Some customers evidently want the quality and the greatest of expediency all at the same time, which, in my opinion, is not readily doable. I think the staff does a remarkable job of producing consistent quality while at the same time being as expedient as possible to assure a quality product each time.

So…marvelous job Bean Bar baristas! Keep doing the...