Drip cafe is a popular Hockessin mainstay. They've remodeled the interior a few times over the years; currently the cafe looks quite chic with lots of dark wood, cute drip-logo signage and lots of light. It's easy to appreciate why certain sets prefer to be seen at Drip in comparison to the less swanky Quin's cafe or Perfect Cup just by using your eyes.
That said, the truth is that as a restaurant Drip has to provide more than elegant settings in order to meet its customers' expectations. As a customer, I was frustrated by a few things. Walking in the door, it was unclear what services(was sit down dining available? - specifically unclear whether people should seat themselves or talk to an employee first(no host, and if there was signage to self seat, I missed it); I was also confused by how to get our food or any attention from waitstaff at all while trying to figure it out out)were being offered and how a customer could avail themselves of them.
Turns out if you want to eat at drip you either have to download Drip's app or stand in the pick up line to order. It seemed like if you ordered pick up, you would wait at the pick up counter for food (no table service?). Frankly, neither option is appealing. Who wants to have to download yet another app to their phone, which can only be used at two locations of one restaurant and which is buggy and annoying to order from? The decision to develop an independent app for drip baffled me, considering most other restaurants leverage the QR code/online menu approach with apparent ease but fine, I'm not management there. I'm sure there are reasons Drip decided customers would want to devote screen space and phone memory in order to be confused by a different ordering experience than any other restaurant I've visited since March 2020. In case I seem annoyed by the app it's worth mentioning that it did delightfully useful things like give me a pop up warning about the time of my order changing every time I added anything to my cart. Surely it wasn't adding insult to injury when my food came more than 30 minutes earlier than the final order time the app adjusted me to after my 2 coffees and entree were in my cart. I'd really recommend that piece of the app experience just be removed or redone entirely.
While struggling with app confusion, then app frustration, it was striking to me that not one of the many employees on duty behind the bar said a word to or acknowledged my group in any way. I tried to catch someone's eyes to get clarity on my questions to no avail. The first time any person paid attention to us was to bring us our food. May I ask, is it policy at Drip to wait until a customer has received their food to provide niceties such as napkins, cutlery, and our coffee order? (We had to ask for our coffee. The girl who brought our food realized we didn't have cutlery or napkins and brought those to us after we'd been served. Forget about anyone asking us if we wanted creamer, condiments or just acknowledging our existence at all.) for the record, we were seated at the bar, not a table, and multiple employees passed us multiple times while we were seated.
I realize that accommodations like apps and virtual ordering were stood up during the pandemic, when limiting direct interactions was an urgent matter of personal health and safety. What's unfortunate is that these measures, over time, sometimes inadvertently have ended up sending the message to workers that your "customers" are only the orders on the screen in front of you. If that's the dynamic Drip wants at their establishment, again, I guess that's cool I'm not their management. But I DO find it insulting when their single-use app which I had to specially download just to order at a restaurant I won't eat at again for months, tries to default me into a 20% tip for an experience where I don't even know who would get that tip let alone why.
As for the food, it was breakfast fare that has been fancified up just enough to match the interior decorations and the bougie expectations that come alone with Drip's sleek look.
It's my opinion that, as a restaurant, food quality should be the backbone of the review rating on Yelp. I cannot recommend this restaurant but it's not because of what I ate, and that's why I am leaving 3 stars. If 3 seems high after reading this review, well, then make a judgment call based on what I've said instead. And thanks for reading this far. read more