Jan 02, 2014 05:34 PM
6797 Views
(Updated Jan 03, 2014 07:26 PM)
This particular Café Coffee Day outlet is located at the ground floor of the Delhi Metro station in Karol Bagh. I believe it is a franchisee store because this is not a listed outlet on the website of Café Coffee Day. This store is not very big but has dine in facilities and can seat around 25-30 odd people. Music is played in the store and there is a large LCD television on one side of the shop. Since this shop is situated right adjacent to the famous Karol Bagh market, one could visit this place especially during the winter season after shopping or before as the case may be. In my case, I was waiting for a friend at the metro station and needed to pass 15 minutes before the friend could arrive and opted to go have a cup of coffee, me being a coffee lover.
First of all, fans of Café Coffee Day should know that one can only expect the different trademarked coffee and drink varieties and a handful of eatables from the franchisees. So obviously the comfortable lounges, books, magazines and the fabulous ambience in a regular CCD would not be available in the franchisee stores. But yet, the dining facilities were I would say fair, though not that luxurious. Now the music being played separately on a music player, with the LCD TV running songs on mute appeared weird. Having both the TV and a music system ‘on’ simultaneously doesn’t make sense.
Coming to the quality of the food and beverages, this store is not up to the mark. Delhi is famous for its tea and most of the tea stalls and restaurants make fabulous tea. However, most shops and outlets that serve coffee prepare a kind of a warm milk shake that is cocoa and coffee flavoured. These drinks don’t give you the impression of real coffee at all. To my surprise, this CCD outlet served cappuccino that was more like coffee-flavoured milk. It was a big disappointment when coming from a CCD franchisee.
I believe the franchisee stores obtain the eatables such as cookies and pastries directly from the main Café Coffee Day and hence I found those alright. However a coffee shop must know to make COFFEE! That is the biggest setback with this outlet.
The non-coffee based beverages listed on the menu are not all available here all the time. But that is something that often happens with all franchisee stores of CCD. The attendants seemed more like owners of the store because they were casual with their body language and not very nice like the employees of any of the Café Coffee Day owned outlets. None of the usual thanking and politeness was found here.
As I mentioned earlier these outlets are not equipped to provide any of the big meals or make birthday cakes. They only stock some of the small eatables and a few non-perishable packed retail items such as waffles and coffee beans.
As for the price of items, I don’t think it is relevant because this particular review is about one specific branch of CCD. Hence, all the items are priced as per Café Coffee Day standards.
Conclusively I would say I won’t give this outlet a thumbs up because barring anything else, what one would look for in a coffee store is coffee itself and if the outlet can’t make that well, then the store managers have to re-invent their strategies or train their employees how to make coffee.
