I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Wellington at 1:48 pm on Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Astoria is my least favourite Wellington Cafe. They have deliberate designed their customer experience to be annoying.
- No Trim milk. I’ve been asking for 8 years. Every second person asks. “No we don’t do that”. Grrrr.
- Please wait for your coffee. WTF ?!?!. I have an important meeting with my guest waiting at the table while I’m wasting 5-7 mins waiting for a surly barista to make the coffee. I’m seething. If there was an Astoria doll I’d be putting pins in it.
Astoria has had this feedback for years, yet value their processes above their customers.
Voting with feet. Never going back.
blog
Rod, I completely agree with you and have voted with my feet as well. Just a pity Cafe Laffare not in the main CBD
If this has been happening for that long why are they still in business? I have had some shocking cafe experiences in Wellington, but that would drive me out the door too.
Couldn’t agree more. Have never understood why that place is so popular — it’s not like there aren’t a dozen other places within a short distance. I guess different people value different things, but it has terrible customer service, it’s noisy, and the furniture is old and uncomfortable. The coffee is OK I guess…
Observation: a second negative post in just a few days …
In defence Astoria’s ‘can you please wait’ requirement suits me very well. No waiting around at my table to be forgotten by busy staff and I get to see(somewhat) my coffee being made.
Even though I’ve had the “no we don’t do trim milk” answer every single time, every single time I’m surprised…
Well despite the fact trim milk is a poor decsion, I must agree Astoria’s service is even worse. I gave up yonks ago and am constantly left bewildered as to why people bother with being treated with such indignity. We’re just so luck to be allowed to drink and eat there I guess…
The question would be…why did you keep going there for 8 years? :) there are some fantastic wellington cafes, I have lots of meetings in them, especially down the cuba end of town.
Highly recommended for daytime include: Doria Cafe (Taranaki st), Katipo, The Cross (cafenet), The Jimmy (cafenet), Offbeat (left bank, for casual/summer). I’m sure there are others at the lambton end of town as well.
I’ve certainly ordered coffee and sat at a table near by. I still found it weird I had to get up to grab it, but hey, I guess they feel they’re busy?
Other end of town… but I love that Cubita has re-opened next to us (on the corner of Courtenay Place and Taranaki Street.) After the fire started by Burger Fuel gutted them, I was hoping they’d come back, and they did, and now with a kitchen to serve fresh hot food. Nice and low key, good coffee, and small enough that the people look after you! :)
I don’t know why I do it this, but when I go in there and see the crap selection behind the DELI glass at the entrance, I wander down to the other end in the hope that there will be something different behind the glass at the other end of the counter - there never is! And have you ever had the fries - way too salty.
‘Surly Barista’ couldn’t have put that better myself
Yeah, the “wait around”, not good.
I love the space/building/room and the buzz that’s in there but I don’t like their idea of “service” and because of that I only go if invited.
Shame.
I can’t believe that it’s THIS post that has dragged me out of a lifetime of lurking - but completely agree, Astoria has to have the worst coffee process in Welli. Please head down Waring Taylor St to Ground Floor, or up Woodward St to Revive immediately.
(and howdy from Beijing, Rod, where your RSS feed is being blocked by the Great Firewall. Not just you though, it seems to be a general thing in the last few months)
I remember the ladies starting up next to wisconsins in hataitai. The service was terrific there and they really cared. This is a classic case of being too successful and losing sight of the customer being your no one priority. One for Gordon Ramsay to sort out
…. me!!!!
I enjoy Astoria and a lot of other cafes - I think the good news is that Wellington is well-served with a wide range of good cafes catering to all sort of tastes.
I don’t use trim milk so their “no trim” policy has never been a problem. And, in defence of their service, I like the way they take the orders quickly and get your coffee out quickly.
My personal bad-service-never-going-back experience is Fuel, especially at Wellington airport. It’s a complete shambles - try getting a coffee ordered and made in the 5 minutes before your flight boards.
The type of service is exactly like that where I’m from (Europe), I would even prefer if they can take an order by the table where I’m sitting. Yeah, people no longer go to coffee shops to relax, read the paper, talk to people, they do get upset when they have to wait, sitting by the table for their order to be made. What-a-drag! {g} It actually bothers me when I have to wait by the cash register and then laptop bag on the shoulder, balancing the full cup, walking around a busy shop to find a place to sit down.
Blue top milk preference has surely something to with the taste, and funnily enough I think that Gordon Ramsay would be the first person crossing off the trim milk version from the list. I believe the owners think that the trim milk just doesn’t taste right so they don’t have it. I happen to know few people who are very picky about their coffee and they all without an exception prefer the blue top. Including me. And the resistance to budge under this new age fat free trend is admirable.
@ Karol I’ve never really bought the whole “if I don’t like it I wont serve it” argument. If that was the case I would never serve my customers anything other then espresso!
As a cafe owner, I crave feedback - both good and bad. If something bugs you at your local, please let them know. If it keeps happening, then vote with your feet.
I remember the Hataitai experience too! It was a great little cafe - one of the first and best…
Karol, “I would even prefer if they can take an order by the table where I’m sitting”
Ernesto for the win in that regard. Regularly come over and take your order.
Astoria just has a nice afternoon in the sun spot, sitting outside (when there aren’t too many smokers around). But the waiting for your coffee thing is ridiculous. There are some other options if you don’t mind walking. Rise on The Terrace was good in the sunny mornings when I worked down there.
Rod why are you going to Astoria when you will get excellent service at Arabica, just around the corner? And you get to spy on all the big wigs riding in the lovely new BMWs.
Interesting to see the variety of cafe choices around the place - but have to agree with Astoria being one of my least favourite.
Why people choose to have business meetings in that dark cave, where the ambient noise is to high to hold even the least civilised of conversations, and the coffee is (to be honest) average continues to amaze me.
Revive on Woodward or Ernesto’s on Cuba - good choices all round.
agree. too noisy too. and full of public servants. plenty of other choices around there too. woodward st over the road a good start.
thanks for the ‘heads up’!
i enjoyed your xero presso at the small business expo in auckland last month and became an instant fan of most things ‘drury’!
…as such, if it ain’t good enough for you, i’ll walk-on-by too ; )
oh, and good on you for making a stand - they can’t say you didn’t give ‘em a chance, chance, chance, chance, chance, chance, chance, chance, chance, chance, chance…
ciao for now
roberto
All you people whining about having to wait for your coffee for 3 - 5 minutes, and and ‘oh no no trim milk!’ You need to get your coffee priorities right. Iv’e worked in various caffe’s and I’ll tell you one thing first up, at least Astoria let you know that they don’t have trim milk, there are other caffe’s that don’t offer it but don’t tell you when you ask for trim, they just make it with full cream and hope you don’t notice. And believe it or not most people don’t notice that it’s not trim, It’s pure psychology, they believe their drinking trim and so they are.
Secondly and more importantly if your going to take a stand against Astoria and against many caffe’s in Wellington, take the ethical stand. While your complaining about having to wait by the counter for your coffee because it’s just too much for you to carry your own coffee to your table, there are farmers in place like ethiopia who sell their coffee to places like astoria but get paid next to nothing, theyre having to pull up their crops in desperation, send their children to the city to find jobs and pray that they will one day be given a fair price. If we should be demanding something from our caffes it should be for them to use fair trade coffee, so take a stand that’s worth taking, go to places like Peoples coffee who do fair trade and make an excellent coffee, or buy your plunger or filter coffee for home from places like trade Aid.
So next time your latte tastes too fatty, spare a thought for the farmers who barely get to feed their families!
…. you’re the 10th person I’ve told today, there is just NO DEMAND for trim milk !
No demand for trim what a joke. I own my own cafe and have plenty of demand for trim milk that it wouldn’t be in my best buisness interest not to have it available. When you are on your travels north and you want trim milk , and have your coffee delivered to your table with a smile stop at the Church Cafe in Sanson we would be pleased to have you as our customer.
On the topic of trim milk… Seriously! Trim milk is dead, processed corporate poison which is fed to animals (pigs specifically) to make them fat! If you’re worried about health don’t drink coffee for starters! Why would you put trim milk which has been stripped of all forms of nutrition into your body. It is the MRM of dairy products and I know people at Fonterra who said NOBODY who works there drinks it and WOULDN’T feed it to animals. At the end of the day, what right does anybody have to slag off someone’s business decision which has been made in the interest of better health and common sense. Since the trim ‘eruption’ happened the rate of obesity in the western world has skyrocketed. Soft drinks are probably less processed than trim milk. My philosophy is “the more goodness they take, the more profit they make.” Wake up and smell the coffee!! I refuse to use trim milk at my cafe and it has made people aware of the dangers of processed food. Go and work in a busy cafe behind a coffee machine and see how “surly” you are when all day you get brainwashed idiots asking for trim decaf mocha lattes in bowls (oxymoron). I mean don’t people realise that there is about two heaped spoons on chocolate powder in a mocha, and then they want trim, probably have a friand (eggs butter sugar) and eggs benedict with bacon (covered in fat sauce). I’m so over peoples blindness when it comes to milk.
Holy crap Brad. Get Over Yourself.
People do stupid crap all the time, god there is probably some guy in NZ who would spend an hour raging at you for not having type 2 rather than type 1 milk or something.
But more importantly, regardless of whether you care about the Ones Who Make Irrational Decisions (which, as a whole, taking into account all decisions made by people everywhere, encompasses pretty much everyone), there are some of us who simply like the taste.
If a customer came in and said “I’d like a mocha latte bowl, and, could you add a splash of salt in there?” would you tell them to get lost because YOU don’t like salt in your coffee?
I hate the taste of redbull, I love the taste of sugarfree redbull. It has nothing to do with weight, god the amount of exercise I get I imagine I actually have to eat more to make up for it, but the taste is distinctly different. Trim milk tastes different to regular milk, and quite a number of people enjoy that taste.
Your pretentious wankery about oxymorons and how people are stupid simply indicates that you are not cut out for customer service. If someone comes in with a request, your objective is to *make them happy*, not to stand there snarling at some perceived flaw in their life plan. If you can’t manage this objective, stop running a cafe and go out and get a job in tech support or something.
If you want to convert people to using full milk, don’t try and force them to it by removing their preferred choice and then lecturing them, use positive methods to bring the message home - provide brochures on the counter about trim vs full, have a cheap/2nd one free full milk day, add signage giving a positive message “we prefer full milk - it’s just better for our customers”, investigate other health options you can achieve with milk (type 2 or whatever it is they’ve been ranting about recently might be a good start), examine the rest of your menu and look for ways to help with health in a positive way. Some people just come in wanting a huge fat-laden breakfast, and for all you know they’re Michael Phelps and burn 12,000 calories a day so that’s fine, but there are a wide variety of ways you could improve your service to avoid excess calories and make your business more efficient.
One classic example is the failure to do meals in kid-size. While it’s a bit of an annoyance to manage, doing so avoids additional ingredient use, and particularly avoids parents ending up nibbling on the kids food even though they’ve had a decent meal themselves. Plus if the chef knows what meals are going out for kids, they can add some half-a-second additions that make your customers more likely to come back, a few colorful jellybeans, something to make the kids feel special etc.
Just running a cafe and being surly makes you more a fool than your customers. Run a cafe and *love* it. And if standing making latte for 12 hours a day pisses you off - redesign the goddamn fittout and install a SEAT. You think any of your customers will give a damn that you’re sitting down? not if their stuff is on time and it’s delivered with a smile they won’t.
Unrelated hint for cafe owners, if you’re a little cafe encourage your customers to know the first names of the staff somehow.