Popped along to check out the new Aroma cafe within the new South Glasgow University Hospital (bit of a mouthful that!). It's situated on the 1st floor (up the escalator) of the new adult hospital building, to the right of the canteen.
First thing we noticed about this Aroma is that you cannot tell if it is actually open or not until you have walked all the way around as the counter area is away around the side. Another tad annoyifying (its a new word yo) thang is you also can't tell how looooooong the queue is either. Eek. We came here about 10:45am and the queue was really long mainly due to that being around the time most staff get their tea break, so visitors please bare this is mind. The busy times are going to be between 10 - 11am and then again 12 - 2pm.
This cafe isn't mega handy for us workers (or early morning/late afternoon visitors/patients) as they don't open until 9am & supposedly they close around 4pm. Great. Real handy that...however they might decide to change this but I very much doubt it.
Looking at the their menu it was nice to see they've added a few different things to it, the first one I noticed was the addition of a Flat White, yas. I need to get a photo of the sign as it says something along the lines of '..every cup comes with it's own latte art' or something similar! We did all think 'Yep, how long is THAT gonna last until they get fed up?!' Haha! However on saying that my colleagues latte's and hot chocolate all came with cute wee hearts which I thought was a nice touch, although could be a tad to close to the bone/sternum if you're a cardiology patient here...haha! I jest of course.
Price wise it's okay, certainly cheaper than your Costas or Star*ucks (sometimes you need a loan to drink there!) ~ I paid £1.30 for a small filter coffee, their cheapest coffee. I think a regular sized latte is about £1.60. They have a decaf option, a small variety of flavoured syrups for your coffee but unfortunately (as of yet) no non-diary milk options. Alongside coffee they also sell tea/s, hot chocolate, fruit juices, soft drinks, sandwiches, toasties/paninis, salads, fruit and a selection of sweet treats including Lemon Drizzle loaf, Carrot loaf, muffins and caramel shortcake.
Seating wise there are quite a few tables near the Aroma but as this cafe is situated alongside the canteen there are plenty of other benches & tables a bit further round as well. I quite like their funky cream & orange plastic chairs; quite 60's looking. They also have THE cutest wee dinky trays!
If you happen to be here for an appointment on some of the walls their are big monitor signs with your name & clinic on and it flashes red and makes a wee pleasant 'bing' noise when it's your turn to be seen. I'm, personally, not overly keen on seeing my name on a pretty big sign telling people what clinic I'm going in to but that's just me and my need for privacy when it comes to personal issues...other than that it is a handy feature.
I have a loyalty card that I picked up from another Aroma cafe (Stobhill) but I didn't see them handing them out here so you may have to ask to get one or maybe they haven't received them yet seens as it's still early days.
At the moment it's a solid 3 stars. My filter coffee was nice and also really quite strong which I really liked. My colleagues were all happy with their drinks too. I hope they sort out the staffing/tills issue so we can see that queue going down a bit quicker (the queue was actually so long today my friend didn't get time to buy a coffee so had to leave!) but as far as Aroma Cafes go, this is a pretty good one. read more