Being new to the neighborhood, I decided to check this place out on my way to Top Pot this morning. I wasn't after coffee or breakfast, just wanted to try some bread. I found a challah on the day old rack, which was plenty for me and my hubby for today, and got into the back of a line.
Then I noticed that everyone else in the line was ordering coffee and breakfast, the line was moving slowly, the cash register did not seem to be directly at the front of the line, and other people were going to the cash register independent of the line, so I thought I would just go pay for my bread and leave. A young man, probably a high school or college student (heretofore known as "student"), was helping someone else and then he started ringing me out. Please note there was no one else right at that moment waiting to pay.
The student had to ask another co-worker how to ring up my day old bread. This coworker was taking the whole "Grateful Bread" thing a little too seriously, with a total hippie costume: old jeans, dreadlocks, and yes, a Grateful Dead T-shirt, as if he were playing a hippie in play (he will heretofore be known as "hippie.")
The hippie had to back the student out of the cash register transaction and start him over, and started to get kind of snippy. Then the hippie says to the student, kind of as an aside (but with me still standing there) something to the affect that he should watch out for people jumping the line. And, this part I know for sure: "it's hardly worth our labor" to sell day old bread.
Shocking!! So why do you sell day old bread, hippie? Kind of uptight for a hippie. It's not my problem your cafe is too confusing to figure out which line to stand in to buy bread.
Here's something else annoying -- there was a very small sign on the wall that stated that organic espresso was available upon request. Why do we have to request it, hippie?
I haven't even tried my challah yet, and I may try Grateful Bread again some other time, but only if I feel girded against verbal abuse by hippies. I can hardly imagine it would be worth it.
** 6/7/08 postscript
This morning I was inspired and thought, If Hillary can throw her support behind Barack Obama, I can reconsider my animosity toward Grateful Bread. Plus I was in the neighborhood, starving and wanting a brownie.
Strangely enough, the mean hippie was there and was very friendly. Someone else served me, and she was OK but put the brownie in a baggie to take home, and the frosting got all over inside the baggie and hardly any was actually left on the brownie when I ate it. Also the brownies were nowhere near the cookies and so I didn't even see them until I went to pay for the cookies I got instead. So now I have cookies, brownies and the line is still crazy and hard to figure out where to stand.
So I raised my rating one star because all of the stuff I have gotten there was good, but the service is still lacking, and in a town where there are so many good baked items you really need to step up the service. read more