Black Sheep Coffee's newest branch in Manchester is perhaps their greatest location yet - it is right in the heart of St Peter's Square, opposite the Central Library, on a warm day you can enjoy the large patio area that has great views of the Library and passing trams, making it one of the best outdoor areas for any coffee shop in the city, especially with such great views.
The interior is also really modern and cool, you can tell they have thought a lot into the design to make it feel unique, cool and like no other coffee shop in the city.
The menu offerings include your standard coffees, some flavouring syrups (no festive drinks for Christmas though!), this goes alongside a selection of cocktails (Priced quite reasonably at £8.99) as well as pastries and Norwegian waffles.
The staff seemed pretty friendly, although they do seem to be pushing ordering via tablets now, I've never seen a coffee shop have tablets by the counter, where you can order, I think this is a cool enough approach to go alongside ordering ahead via their app, but I still think a coffee shop is where you want the personal aspect of service, and I do think they should never ditch that completely, at some points during my time in-store, there was no one manning the checkout meaning people were having to use the tablets to order and pay.
While the interior looks good, it can get pretty cold as they did leave the automated doors wide open at all times, pretty frustrating especially on a cold winter's evening, they also lack comfortable seating, they seem to use hard wooden seating, again a huge drawback as they seem to be prioritising looking good over comfort.
I ordered a large iced vanilla latte, despite not being overly busy, my drink did take a while to be made, the coffee quality was good after I stirred the beverage, as they did leave all the vanilla at the bottom. I would suggest bringing your own straw if ordering an iced beverage, the paper straws here are low quality and started to sag straight after stirring my drink, it would be great if they offered straws from a stronger material such as bamboo similar to what Joe and the Juice use.
4* - A pretty cool place to grab a coffee, and maybe a cocktail with unique decor and menu and late-night openings until 9 pm in a central location within the city, not perfect but worth a visit for sure. read more