We live in the area and come to Grandma Moses regularly. We've had a few bad experiences and a few neutral experiences. Among the bad:
- I walked in once and saw one of the female family members on staff speak very rudely to one of the older (non-family member) staff.
- Another time during a weeknight, I walked in thirty minutes prior to closing and had staff ignore me for a full five minutes until I called out, at which point they stated they were closed. I asked if their hours had changed because the sign on the door said they were still open for another thirty minutes and they told me they didn't know - they'd just been told to close by one of the managers.
- Staff can be occasionally taciturn and unfriendly, so much so that we often speculate that they make the majority of their money from catering and so don't feel the need to put as much effort into the storefront.
Today, however we have finally sworn off Grandma Moses: after buying a coffee and two takeaway pastries, we sat down for a few minutes to read a magazine.
After several minutes, we had the South African owner pointedly interrupt us to ask if we "required anything else" - he was clearly pushing us out of the cafe, perhaps because he'd deemed that we hadn't bought enough to justify our continued presence there. The cafe wasn't overly full and there were still plenty of seats, two of which he and the other owner had just taken up themselves for several minutes while they sat down and had a coffee.
For us, this was the last straw - for whatever reason, Grandma Moses' staff have a very "take it or leave it" approach to customer service. If you're willing to put up with lacklustre staff interaction and occasionally rude behaviour for half-decent baked goods in the area, then this may be the place for you. read more