At Cafe Allez!, we get feedback in many forms. Sometimes it’s face to face, but you’ll also see it spread over Tripadvisor, Google, Facebook (reviews), Trustpilot, Add to Event…
We absolutely lap this up as we believe feedback to be the ‘breakfast of champions’!.
In the coffee shop, behind all of our menus you’ll find a pen and a feedback card that asks 2 simple questions:
- What’s one thing you loved most about your visit today?
- What’s the one thing you’d like us to do differently?
Since we opened, we’ve had over 250 cards handed back to us and we review each one carefully to help us improve our offer or just to share our customers’ thoughts with the team.
Having a little time on our hands now means that we can really take stock and pick out some themes.
The most consistent praise we get (and this is a tribute to the team) is that the service is friendly, the greetings genuine. This really matters to us and we know that the personal touch, even if it’s just a friendly ‘hello’, goes a long way.
We also get consistently good feedback about our coffee, our food and general value for money. We take no credit for the view, but that gets more than the odd mention too!
Looking back, it’s also gratifying to note that many suggestions / asks have been actioned since we opened back in May. Apart from those in August asking for some better weather at the time! We saw many requests for bike racks; a suggestion to offer free dog treats; a plea for some walking routes in the area, all of which we’ve delivered.
Some requests are very understandable but we know are not practical for us. Some of you would love eggs with your breakfast or even a ‘Full English’, but when we build the menu, we know that we have to be able to prepare every dish at speed, and in a tiny kitchen. We sometimes have groups of 20+ cyclists or large running groups arriving together and we need to know that the gap between serving the first and the last in each group is fine for all.
We also sometimes get some conflicting feedback. One card thanked us for providing free drinking water and loved the slices of lemon in it; another asked us to ditch the lemons! So it’s also important to recognise that we will never please everybody all the time: we’re always listening but we need to be true to our vision and really consistent in how we deliver it.
Keep the feedback coming, whether it’s in person, on our cards or electronically. It drives us on!
