Starbucks

It's Starbucks, and ticks all the boxes you'd expect. This store is good, with the main negatives being out of staff's control. Friendly staff and good products can't make me ignore the geographical reality that it'll take 20-25 minutes of my lunch hour to get in the parking lot, get my order, and leave the parking lot. If you're patient and not on limited time, by all means add a star. My only real knock on the service is that they're usually quick to open the second register to try to get the line down, but there are still only 1 or 2 people making drinks. It's not uncommon for paying to be fairly quick, while actually waiting for your drink takes 5-10 minutes. The staff are great, but the store process there is killing service. If more than 1 person is waiting to receive their drink, you need baristas not cashiers. There's no drive-through, which feeds the "long lines" issue. The plaza is also difficult to get in and out of. You have to go through the narrow, winding, busy parking lot to enter/exit via Essa. From Veterans you're either (southbound) turning left across three lanes of oncoming traffic, or (northbound) waiting behind a huge line of people waiting to turn right onto Essa, praying that more than 2 of them get through the light so you can get into the shopping centre and wait in line for coffee. If you're exiting onto Veterans you can only turn right, and the traffic is often bad enough that you can work on composing your memoirs while hoping that those same 2 people might get through the light so you can take their spot at Kafka's Intersection and help block the next customer trying to turn in from Veterans. Not that I'm bitter.
7 years ago (15-12-2017)

The staff were polite, neatly dresses , smiling and professional. The store was clean, comfortable and we were sitting chatting amongst ourselves for quite some time and the staff let us. This is a good place to be.🙃the drinks were very good too.
7 years ago (27-01-2018)

Went there today and stood in line like a normal civilian. A female staff member decided to cut in line in front of me to order something for herself (for free). I might have said something to her if she was another civilian like me, but I thought that maybe they had official Starbucks staff business to address... Nope! She proceeded to chat with the order taker while I stared at the back of her head. The back of her head was shaved if you want to know who the offending staff member was. I made eye contact with the order taker to see if he noticed me during the extended chat session but he didn't acknowledge that I was the rightful next in line, or even to let his co-worker know that someone is waiting. They just chatted away. Not sure why she couldn't wait or just make the free drink for herself but I guess that's the kind of shenanigans to expect from this location. I won't be back to this one.
7 years ago (10-02-2018)

Went there today and stood in line like a normal civilian. A female staff member decided to cut in line in front of me to order something for herself (for free). I might have said something to her if she was another civilian like me, but I thought that maybe they had official Starbucks staff business to address... Nope! She proceeded to chat with the order taker while I stared at the back of her head. The back of her head was shaved if you want to know who the offending staff member was. I made eye contact with the order taker to see if he noticed me during the extended chat session but he didn't acknowledge that I was the rightful next in line, or even to let his co-worker know that someone is waiting. They just chatted away. Not sure why she couldn't wait or just make the free drink for herself but I guess that's the kind of shenanigans to expect from this location. I won't be back to this one.
7 years ago (10-02-2018)

Nice place, the seats fill up quick though, so if you are meeting up with someone make sure to come early!
7 years ago (06-03-2018)