Caffe Nero - County Durham

Friendly staff, prompt service and exceptional coffee. 5* standard.

As said below, there's an incredibly rude male barista (no hair) who really needs to sort himself out. Friendly customer service in exchange for money seems to be too much of an ask. Go elsewhere.

I usually love getting coffee from here and have a pleasant experience but the older male barista with no hair is always so rude. By having a member of staff be so unnecessarily volatile it's off-putting for customers to come in. Please sort this out.

I went to Caffe Nero as I have been to many of these chains before. I have had two instances with the same staff member who has been rude and very confrontational. One instance my order was prepared wrong so I kindly asked for it to be redone, (I ordered a hot drink and was served it as an iced one, my friend was with me and confirmed with me after that i asked for hot). I was very nervous about asking as I am autistic and struggle with social situations. Upon asking for a new drink I was met with the staff member being quite argumentative and disagreeing with me, inisting I had ordered cold. I was lucky my friend was there as she confirmed that I had ordered a hot drink to the barista. I got my drink in the end but while waiting for it to be served I was very uncomfortable as the atmosphere from staff seemed very annoyed. Secondly, on one occasion I went and me and my friend both wanted to order in takeaway cups but asked for sit in. We have to ask for it this way as our lunch time is very limited on most days so we can only sit in the cafe for around 5 minutes before we have to return to our classes, I also always as for a takeaway cup as I have a lot of sensory issues in relation to cups and this is the easiest way for me to get takeaway drinks. While waiting for our drinks to be served two of the baristas began gossiping and talking about how they didn 't like customers who ask for such things, it just felt very rude and as if they were blaming us for 'getting rid of their jobs ' as quoted from one of the baristas, and they were gossiping about customers infront of our faces. At the end of the day they are still making the coffee, so no jobs are lost. Overall products are same old same old, if you have been to any Caffe Nero before then all items are just the same. I haven 't been back since the second incident as the anxiety and confrontational staff are preventing me from doing so...

I understand covid is a stressful time but we were shocked by our experience today. Me and my friend were wearing masks and were stood outside when a gentleman staff member (middle aged, bald) said there were no tables, so it was takeaways only. We asked if we could wait for a table, and he said sure if you wait outside. We of course said yes. We waited happily outside for around 10-15 minutes. Other customers began to go in, and a couple turn round and said oh sorry are you waiting, we replied yes we just want a table so we are waiting, but you can still get takeaway. They said oh sorry for pushing in front and left. The man than cane up to me and my friend, raised his voice, telling us how dare we tell customers they can 't come in and that we cant reserve a table. We said oh we are really sorry we just told them we were waiting for a table We went on to shout at us telling us we can 't do that and we don 't run the shop, before going back inside. We were shocked, we felt this was really unprovoked. And we did everything we could to follow all the rules. We left, and still shaken up by the rudeness of this man. From working in customer service, in a coffee shop myself, I was shocked by how someone could speak to customers like that and I hope no other customers have to experience this again.