Urban Barrel Expresso

Sandwich, coffee, tea shop with a small collection of sweet treats serving Campos coffee beans. Coffee is nice (had a piccolo) and the sandwiches are made to order. One thing that did stand out is that the coffee is more expensive than other places around (eg. Brooklyn Coffee on Pitt Street - little cart just outside the Westin Hotel does 2x coffees for $6 when you pay together) while Urban Barrel is $7+ (pedantic I know but there's so much choice around the MLC Centre). Worth checking out as another coffee / lunch spot.

They make great coffee and most of the staff are friendly besides one lady who has been rude and has no customer service skills at all. She is of South American decent and is always talking in Spanish with another staff while customers are around. I think it is unprofessional as most of the time I feel like I am being spoken about.

Like most mornings, I ordered my regular “small skim cap no sugar” . What I got this morning, was a coffee with sugar and a female staff member, with clearly a poor grasp of the English language, giving me attitude for returning it. The situation became comical when she aggressively advised that if I place an order through her ,(like I should pay attention each day with whom I place my coffee order with…my bad!! ), I should not have ordered a coffee with no sugar, if I don’t like sugar in my coffee--because it confused her!!! I explained that I did that once before and still got sugar in my coffee regardless. Then she advised if I am not happy with the coffee service then I should go elsewhere. I then suggested, how about each staff member taking orders that day put up their own sign ( in English ) on how they would like their customers to place their orders…good CAMPOS coffee but a very poor service delivery

All of them busy on their phones. Guy behind coffee machine playing on his phone and then makes my coffee from shots he'd pulled previously and milk which was boiling hot (again obviously premade). Not a great experience and my coffee was very average. Plus kind of gross that the guy is playing with his phone and then puts my takeaway lid on with his dirty hands. Management, no phones rule while at work would really help :)

It was the first time I went there, the coffee was good. The staff seemed friendly at the start but after I said “I’m good thanks, how are you?” Everyone went silent!! Lol so awkward, and I’m not sure why they were like this, I said the same things that I say at any other places that I get my coffee from lol They didn’t ask me if I wanted a small or large or sugar or anything either. So I guess I’ll go back to other happy people at other happy places next time I’m getting a coffee in the morning