In the spirit of honesty, I despise Starbucks. I've only ever had 4 good drinks from Starbucks. 3 were in New York City and one was in Leeds when I was so hungover I just needed something approximating caffeine in my system.
With that out in the world now, I think that Caffe Nero is the best chain coffee shop that the UK has to offer; it feels more sophisticated than Starbucks, Costa and Pret (should Pret be in this list I wonder). This could be down to the soulful jazz and easy listening classics that they pump into their stores. This could be the sumptuous sofas that fill their stores. This could be me seeing what I want to see because I like what they sell.
I could of course go on and on about how Caffe Nero make their hot drinks, or how they heat their sandwiches, or how they spin their iced drinks... but every Caffe Nero, and for that matter Starbucks, Costa and others, do this to a specific brand way of doing this and so what they do there on Boar Lane differs from what they do in London, Liverpool, Southampton or Hull by about 0.1% depending on the barrista you get.
So beyond that there are only two reasons to use Boar Lane Nero over any other - location and staff.
On the location point, the Boar Lane store is pretty much in the middle of everything I do in life - it's 4 minutes from work, 6 minutes from home, 5 minutes from the cinema and gym, 7 minutes from The Adelphi... it's central, and this is good.
From a staff point of view, it's hit and miss at times with a moderate level of churn in staff turnover from what I see, but most of the people that serve you really are looking to make your stay/purchase as great as possible. There are the occasional exceptions to this of course, but aren't there everywhere?
It's a decent cup of hot caffeine, at a moderate price, served by completely normal people, in the center of the circle of my life - so if you work where I work and live where I live and do what I do, it's darned near perfect; for everyone else, it's probably just another coffee shop. read more