Costa Coffee on Market Street has recently re-opened for sitting-in, I decided to give Costa a chance with their promotion of giving a free coffee up to the value of £3 in the month of July as a promotion to welcome people back, and the fact this remains one of the few coffee-shops in the city right now to offer sitting in facilities (Pret also do this but they close super early, meanwhile Starbucks remains take-out only)
I did have problems getting the app working so I had to wait and order in the queue, they did try to socially distance when possible with markings on the floor however I found it complicated in where to pick up my drink as they were making drinks on both sides of the counter, which meant having to go back and forth due to the layout of the store and the signs, which meant I felt like a yoyo.
They weren't making customers aware you had to scan an app in order to sit in, they did have this signposted around the store but it would have been easy to miss this. Basically you have to scan a QR code, enter the store number and then fill in your personal information which is solely down to UK law and the NHS contact tracing.
My drink came to £3.35. I was upset that they couldn't knock the full value of my 300 points off, and instead, they could only knock off the price of the Iced Latte at £2.85. I had to pay an extra £0.50, rather than £0.35 for vanilla syrup.
My drink was awful and had no flavour, it had a large foam on the top too and it just didn't taste like a latte at all, even for a paper straw it was also pretty bad and began to sag from the moment I put it in my beverage.
I do think the store could be doing more to make the store easier to follow even with social distancing guidelines of 1m+ as it constantly felt like I was going back and forth, they also need to be doing more to implement the legal requirement of the contact tracing and also change the wording of their free coffee promotion as if you want any extras, chances are the drink won't be free. The overall atmosphere of the place sucked, like my drink too. A real shame. 1* read more