Strange Chain Coffee Shop Experienve

[rocketman84]

Went into a very popular coffee shop chain today and ordered a medium iced latte, (clearly said medium, twice). The server said £4.35 please and I tapped my card before the price on the wall behind him stated a medium iced latte was £4.00. I questioned this and the server looked nervous and stumbles over his words, at which point the barista jumps in and said “oh we’ve had price increases that haven’t been updated yet”. I thought this was bizarre as the prices were shown on tv type screens. She started making my MEDIUM latte (in a medium size cup), at which point I glanced at my receipt to see the server had rung through a large (which in fact was priced at £4.35). I immediately said “hang on you’ve charged me for a large”. Both the till sever and the baristas faces seems to drop and the barista started rambling about price rises, miscommunications (all of what she was saying didn’t make sense), then shouted to the till server “ok give her a refund, GIVE HER A REFUND”. I had paid by card so expected to be refunded this way, but instead a very panicked and guilty looking server dived into the tip jar to pick out 35p refund. I again questioned that there weren’t any price rises… as the price on the screens was, in fact, correct. To which I got bombarded with loads of verbal diarrhoea which didn’t make sense. So I left with my coffee and my 35p.
It was all very very bizarre, and from the reactions and behaviour of the staff I’m pretty sure it was some type of scam (I’m not sure how but I am convinced that it was), and that they probably get away with it all the time.
Edit: apologies about the typo in the heading, it was obviously an experience

I have personally tested the McDonalds cappucinos - I poured a large size coffee into the regular size cup and it fit comfortably with space - since then I no longer bother ordering the large.

No shit

I'm not sure you are right...perhaps not down to individual cup level but there will be tight levels of stock control, portion size.

There's an American programme called bar rescue it's on Prime and they constantly go on about amount of drink served, use machines that only deliver an exact amount of beer...no spillage allowed.

I expect they have given their mates a load of freebees and are worried about being found out

Interesting.

Yes exactly my point! So silly to start making up lies about price rises etc.

Tell head office. They can see if it's new staff, an audit due, an over-zealous Large push, etc. The extra info will make it make sense for them to decide if there are next steps.

I didn’t think iced drinks came in sizes?

That doesn't mean anything apart from that the cup is big enough. If you think their machines aren't calibrated properly and you're not getting the correct amount of drink you should report to trading standards

It seems quite unlikely that McD are pulling some large scale con on drink volumes that no one has noticed

Not naive at all thinking like that at all, very balanced - occam’s razor !

I don't think the OP had said which chain is was but you can get different sizes in Starbucks, I guess the other large places are the same

They do in the shop I was in, not sure about the others

It's the lying about the price rise that needs reporting, the size of the coffee is just a minor issue compared to this. That is brazen and a very bad reflection on the staff. How many others will they try to cheat?

I work profit protection in a coffee shop and I’m trying to figure out the reasoning!
It’ll probably be till errors and error corrects being flagged as high maybe?
Price rise will be some bullshit excuse as to not have to correct it on the till.
35p from tips will be so that it’s not flagged either.

Basically, it sounds like they have form as a store for making incorrect till inputs and they’ve made another one and they’re trying to fix their fuck up by lying clumsily to you.

Margins aren’t usually so tight that staff are having to scrape pennies from legitimate customers in order to cover free drinks, there’d be easier and better ways of covering those.

Usually, non consumable stocktake is usually once a year.
Good practice for food and ingredients stock count can be once a month or once a week depending on the stores missing margin.

Not sure abt the others but Nero used to have targets based on inputting the order correctly. If we had to edit the orders on the till too many times it would lower our weekly target and we would get in trouble.

Regarding cup stock etc we went to a McDs late one evening. We tried to order a couple of large meals but we're told we couldn't as they didn't have any large cups. We all said we were happy to take a medium with the large meal, we were just hungry. The staff member told us they weren't allowed as the cup sizes inventory had to match to the sales. Now I don't suppose a small difference in numbers would matter but it was just easier to have a blanket ban on doing it. Mind you we did buy more chips so maybe THAT was a scam! 🤣🤣

All this over 35p

We always do this. We take our own cups (branded and medium size) pay for a small and it is ALWAYS a full cup.

mind you having been an every week regular we’ve started going to independent ones now as the cakes are far superior.

Costa do this ALL the time!!!!

It sounds like they cocked the order up and didn't want to admit to it. Taking 35p from the tip jar meant that it was probably more trouble than it was worth to put it right.

They took 35p from the tip box !?!
That’s definitely wrong.

Some Costa drinks only come in medium and above

Does the till send the price info to the card reader or is it typed in manually? If it's manual then £4.00 in the till, input £4.35 to the card reader, till is now 35p up which can be taken out in cash and put in the tip jar.

I generally try and assume the best of people.

Most likely, the till worker wasn't really listening properly/mis-heard your order/put the wrong thing in the till by accident/their finger slipped/they'd had a run on large iced coffees, so assumed yours was the same - probably a common order on a hot day/is new on the job and got flustered/the barista was also busy and flustered.

I wouldn't leap to assume some sort of convoluted scam that even the people here on MN can't work out. There are dozens of possible answers, rather than just "scam".

yep I, and I’m sure lots of others, generally do the same. But I’m afraid this situation was different. Why the lies about price rises when there was not any price rises? Maybe you just had to be there to understand.

It’s 35p, at the end of the day I’m not actually bothered about the money but I was just curious about what was going on. And it p*ssed me off a bit that she felt she could lie to my face

In all but very small places the card reader will be linked to the till but even if it waant that's some heavy lifting to juggle the cash and get the till right for a few pence even if they managed to get away with it a few times a day

I keep seeing on here that no one pays cash anymore so how would they be able to steal all the 35ps anyway?