Waiting to buy food while coffees are being made

[Goldfishgreen]

There is a cafe near us that makes great pre-prepared sandwiches. It’s also popular for coffee. I don’t take a long lunch break and there is always a massive queue at this cafe for people waiting for coffee. I have a sandwich in hand and ALL I need to do is pay for it and go and yet to do so I have to wait 15 mins for everyone in-front of me to get their coffees made. I notice the same system a lot of places, and usually I just don’t bother buying the food and go elsewhere. I appreciate that the mark ip on the coffee is probably much bigger than the sandwich, but they must lose out on so many food purchases but making everyone wait for other people’s coffee to be made. This is surely madness?

Puts me off too. I end up going to Tesco express if I need a sarnie.

They can't possibly know that you are only there to pay for a sandwich. There can be many solutions to this, including giving them heads up, asking people in the queue if you could just go ahead and pay in front of them, having the exact cash with you that you can drop and go...
In our local, there is a person manning the tills and a person making coffees so it's not been an issue but I worked in a coffee shop myself in my 20s and we had no issues with regulars just waving their sandwich in the air and dropping cash on the counter. The ticket is to build relationships with staff so you can do that.

Because most people aren't just buying a sandwich
They'll buy a drink with it too

They probably get hardly anyone buying a sandwich from a coffee shop without buying a coffee, so it's unlikely to cause them much lost business.

It wouldn't occur to me to do that unless it was the only place in the area that sold food, because they're just as shit as supermarket/Greggs etc but twice the price.