Me vs Costa...

[ImAMarshmellow]

Went to a shopping centre this morning with ds. Wanted to stop for a coffee mid morning so went into one of the 2 costas in the retail park.
Ds is intolerant to soya, dairy and eggs, which means he essentially can't have anything that Costa sell. (Bread contains soya, crumpets have eggs in and cakes are self explanatory. They also prepare stuff in the same area, so cross contamination is highly possible) I don't want him eating a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, so I normally take a bag of Ella's puffs snacks or similar. (He's 15 months).
Bought myself a coffee and cake and sat down with ds and his snack. He's happily chomping through his snack and an employee brought my drink over and asked if I had bought the snack ds was eating from there... I explained not and that he can't eat anything from there because as far as I am aware most of the foods are unsuitable for his dietary needs. She basically asked me to either leave or put the snacks away.
So was I wrong for bringing my own snacks or was I being reasonable since he really can't eat anything from there?
The only other 2 places to eat within that retail park would have been the same I.e they sell cakes/snack style foods.

‘I’m not moving’ should have been your answer. What a ridiculous overzealous person!

OP, I've had similar issues (though more allergies). I usually found that asking when I bought my own food "if it (personal food for child) was ok because..." got a positive response. In fact not once did I ever get a no. To be fair, though, I don't drink coffee so it was more restaurants etc. Perhaps you should just mention it early on rather than just pulling out the snacks? Sorry if you've already said something along these lines; I've not rtft

I've never known any place take offence to my ds having a snack that wasn't bought there if a child is under about 2yo. Ridiculous, I do it in Costa all the time! You bought stuff!

No way would I ask in advance.

Why not ask in advance, TenForward? It's polite, and means there's never any trouble afterwards.

Because. It's. A. Fucking. Baby.

This is not, to borrow an example from upthread, me wandering in with my McCoffee and Big Mac and going "Oh, it was too noisy in MaccyDs, mind if I sit in here? Ta."

My baby would not be in Costa without me being in Costa. She's not yet an independent agent with spending power. The rule is one that needs to be applied with common sense.

Plus when I've been rushing around with my child and need to:
Wrestle open a heavy door while holding a pram
Navigate said pram through people and tightly-packed furniture and park it in a place where it's not in anyone's way
Take off my coat and get my wallet out
Extract my baby from the pram, join the queue, while keeping one eye on my pram so some thieving fucker doesn't walk off with it
.... I'm not going to waste time asking a question that shouldn't need to be asked on the off chance it's a "no, sorry" and I'm forced to reverse the whole process to leave and find somewhere where I can sit down for 5 fucking minutes and inhale my coffee which I desperately need after being up half the night with a tiny human.

We've always done this, our son has an intolerance so similar situation to you. We've never been confronted about it and would laugh if we were. As long as you have bought something in store IMO it's fine.

It's a baby/toddler FFS - Smile, nod and say "I am not moving dear"

So what actually happened OP? She told you that you couldn't bring in food, which is not unreasonable. Did you argue? Did you put it away? Did you leave?

Or was it completely undramatic and all this fuss is for nothing?

Yeah, I think Mr Costa would not have a problem with it, you just happened upon a jobsworth. Don't worry about it.

I used to have this in places with my daughter who has a very severe peanut allergy (as well as allergies to various other nuts, beans, eggs, milk intolerance, and soya allergy) I used to say that I would happily purchase my daughter anything off their menu that they can recommend for someone who has these allergies, providing that I could have it in writing prior to purchase, from a senior member of staff that the company will take full liability should she have a reaction, either from the ingredients or cross contamination. And I would show them the contents of her medicine bag, including epi-pens. Other than that, 'she will be eating her own food in here thankyou, whilst I eat my (purchased from them) food', however I always made a point of purchasing her a drink from them.

I would also make sure that I thoroughly checked out the menu, and IF there was anything that she could eat from there I would purchase it and only let her eat brought in food as a last resort. Not once in 16 years of allergies has anyone agreed to sign a piece of paper accepting liability. Though once I got up, left my food that I had taken three bites from (before being approached by a waiter about my daughter's brought from home sandwich) and told them I would be leaving without payment as I was not going to let my child go hungry whilst I eat (she was a toddler at the time). And I walked out and took my custom elsewhere. After that I did make a point of checking with cafe / restaurant staff before ordering if there was an issue about her eating her own food/snack.

It is much less of a problem now she is older, more places are allergy aware than they were 15 years ago and tend to have more varied menus than ever before and we tend to stick to restaurants that we know are ok with the menu choices they have. Biggest problems we have had, have been the whole nuts on planes scenario.

you just happened upon a jobsworth

...or a low-paid service worker who has standing instructions to challenge anyone bringing non-Costa food out in the cafe.

I'm guessing most of you have never worked in a service job.

I always go to Costa (or M&S) to feed my child. I buy a drink and often food and feed him. The staff just come and talk about how cute/pleasant my kid is. No fuss about feeding them stuff not bought from there.

Because he's a baby then I definitely think she was going OTT. Older kids and adults, that's piss-taking.

Having said that, I think it would have been polite for you to ask first.

You were a paying customer who had bought food and drink, so the staff member shouldn’t have challenged you. Next time go to Starbucks or Nero as they are very different.

Costa just dumps lacto free milk into lacto containers. Starbucks and Nero use seperate lacto free containers - still no good for allergies, but is ok for intolerances. But even then they don’t care if paying customers bring in their own food for babies - and will often offer hot water to warm up milk and pouches etc.

Complain. You'll get a voucher and hopefully they will change the policy and the over enthusiastic waitress will be told the error of her ways. Completely unacceptable if you've paid for food. Shame on them.

That's rubbish, they should have used some common sense. I don't think this would happen at my local Costa, in fact all the Costas round here have lovely staff who are great with kids.

Complain. You'll get a voucher

Rubbish. The waitress was doing exactly as she had been told to do. It's industry standard to not allow outside food and drink.

The the "jobsworth" people; have a word with yourselves.

I wonder what they’d say if you were breastfeeding. That also involves giving your child food that was brought from outside.

That's been said four times and it's even stupider by now.

I've had the same problem when DDINBYCH was a baby, she couldn't eat the café food, I'd bought my sandwich and drink there, I'd brought her some homemade mashed up food. This was our lunch. A member of staff complained, I said "until you sell baby food in here, if I'm buying my lunch here, I'll bring hers with me."

I don't even think you need the dietary restrictions to swing this one in your favour. Your child is very young. We take snacks out for very young children and we buy for ourselves. I have never had a problem in a situation like yours and I'm on child 3. YANBU.

I take the kids their own drinks to playcentres and they are 9, 5 and 3. I despise paying over the odds for drinks. Food never seems so highly priced at the side of liquid. They have a sip and it goes back in my bag. I get a nice drink and a cake etc.

Yanbu
I often give the dc my own snacks and drinks in costa rhen tuck into cake and coffee myself. No one has ever said anything...

Agree with everyone. Having said that, they do sell fruit like banana and orange at Costa. Interested to know what you did. Would they have given refund if you left?

lol
so true
staff was told to tell you that
if she heard it on her training course ...doesn't have enough intelligence to think if you remove snack child will scream plus you paid for coffee and cake ffs