Caribou Coffee

In all, they are fairly consistent with their drinks. There espresso pour is consistent — not overly roasted or bitter and hasn’t changed in years. The service is adequate and fast, but as a somewhat regular patron, it would be nice to have even friendlier service… like a bright smiling face, eye contact with the barista, and a cheery hello.

Classic Caribou experience, excellent coffee, homogenized nature theme, corporate. This location is in a splendid St Paul neighborhood, drawing a mixture of creative and upscale people, lovely people. If you see a low rating it’s because there’s not enough data. This is good old reliable beautiful Caribou Coffee on Grand Avenue in St Paul. There’s not much to screw up. Enjoy. :)

I’ve been to many caribous and I am not impressed with this location. Bummed that the staff is not friendlier or more welcoming

Not particularly impressed with this Caribou (or any others for that matter) but it’s ok for what it is. I come Friday mornings to meet with a mentor of mine and it’s convenient with plenty of street parking around the corner off Grand. It’s better than the crowded Starbucks across the street which I believe is why we meet here. If it were up to me, I’d prefer to go to any other local shop. I’m new to the cities and there is certainly no shortage of great independently run cafés. If you want a quick generic cup of modestly fulfilling consumerism, this is the spot.

Maybe it’s because I’m new to the area, but Caribou is still novel to me. Been here a couple of times during the morning and it’s usually pretty busy (at least on weekends). The staff was friendly and efficient. My drink and food were made as ordered. I received my food/​drink in a timely manner. I have no reason to avoid this place, except maybe because it gets so busy, but that’s a personal preference.
My only real complaint is that the parking lot for this place is weird. It seemed like a majority of the spaces were designated for very short term parking… like 10 minutes. If you want to sit and have a leisurely breakfast, you probably will have to park elsewhere.

This is the nastiest Caribou I have ever been to. Its nasty because the people who work here are not friendly at all like fellow Unilocalers have mentioned and its nasty because its filthy dirty!
I am attaching some photos, if Unilocal allows them to be posted and you can see how dirty for yourself this place is. I did fill out a complaint form on the caribou website and also attached the photos so hopefully a district manager or someone will go into this branch and try to straighten things out.
After sitting at my dirty table, looking at the filthy floor, and seeing the spilled beverages on the side of the leather chairs and in the self serve area, I really didn’t want to drink my drink and very thankful i didn’t order anything to eat. The health department seriously needs to take a peek into this place.
Do yourself a favor, go to the Starbucks across the street or the Caribou down on Grand a few blocks and stay far away from this one.

This Caribou is the one on Grand at Oxford. The store manager called me after an incident that I made a customer service complaint about on the website. He apologized and said he’d like to mail me a $ 5 gift card and hoped I’d give them a second chance. This took place on June 15, 2011. No gift card ever arrived. On June 29, I stopped in, asked the barrista if the manager was there, she said no, I asked her to please mention that I was in (up until June 15, I was a regular customer and stopped by 2 or 3 times a week — I’ve purchased nothing there since) and wondered why my gift card had not arrived. She said she would let him know. I then called and spoke to that manager on July 11 and he said they are mailed from corporate headquarters so he didn’t know why it never arrived. I stopped in again yesterday 7/​14, but the manager was on vacation, so I asked the same barrista to have the district manager call me then. I told her, I really want to give Caribou the benefit of the doubt, that this is an oversight, but now it’s a month later and I’m about to go post my review online and I’d like to know that the card has at least been mailed. She said she’d see him the next day and let him know. So no call, no card. What happened on June 15 was that the shop itself had cold air blasting from the vents and it was really cold so while I’m submitting an online form to let them know (this happened once last summer too), I am sitting about 6 feet away from the register and I notice the young man working the register acting differently toward female customers. It was funny, too, because he’s always been aloof and doesn’t say thank you to me or greet me when I come in, but I thought it was just him — I hadn’t realized it was because I am female until I noticed him saying «hello, howareya» to men as soon as they walked in the door but waiting for the women to come forward and say what they’d like without saying hi first. (Whenever I used to come in, I would say hi and literally wait three seconds for him to say hi back. *Then* I’d order.) So I thought maybe it’s just a coincidence and it’s only those few customers I’ve watched out of the corner of my eye while filling out this form about the air conditioning. So I watched, for forty minutes. Not only was he consistently friendly to male customers and consistently unfriendly to female customers, if the women ordered coffee (not a mocha or a latte but coffee that he would turn around and get for them), he would fill their cup and then hand it to them without saying a word. Not «thank you,» not «have a nice day,» nothing. It was amazing — and if you guessed that every single one of the women said thank you to him, you guessed right. It was a fascinating study in human behavior. We are so trained to be polite and not one of them failed to be polite to him despite his rudeness toward them. Interestingly, I had filled out three surveys in the past few months stating that while everything is tasting the same, customer service quality at the store is going downhill (as a few previous reviewers have noticed), and specifically mentioned this person and that he doesn’t say thank you. I even mentioned it to the shift supervisor who often works with him, but that was back when he first started because I was so surprised by his lack of manners. The shift supervisor and I had run into each other on Grand: I said to her, what is up with the new guy? He doesn’t say thank you! And she said she’d already talked to him about it because it was affecting their tips and that I should mention it on the surveys if it continued (which it did and which I did, three times). But I had no idea until June 15 that he was perfectly polite and courteous to male customers. The whole thing is weird and not very Caribou-​like. So I’ve been to Starbucks more than few times since June 15. I’ll update this review if they ever do get back to me about the five dollar gift card. It makes me wonder of course if they ever really intended to send me one at all.

It’s a pretty typical Caribou, which puts it at three stars automatically. Caribou sacrifices excellence for consistency. This is understood. But the staff at this location takes the brand down a notch. They’re just not pleasant. I used to be a cog in the Caribou machine. I know the deal. They’re supposed to be engaging and upbeat. They’re supposed to amuse us with their little smiles and cheerful banter. I used to hate the shit out of that, but I played the game.
Also, they don’t use espresso fast enough. (It should be combined with milk no less than 30 seconds after the shot finishes. Otherwise the entire drink gets that burnt taste that most people don’t really like.)

This is a pretty basic Caribou. It’s not great, it’s not bad.
I’ve been here a handful of times and have had a lot of inconstancy with the barista’s — some are awesome and some are horrible. I’ve never had a problem with my drink being made improperly, but I have had the wrong size made or it’s taken far to long to make for no reason.
It’s a fairly quite Caribou — good if you need to get together to catch up with a friend or you just want to enjoy a book with some coffee.

Stopped in here after the bad meal at India House across the street to try and wash the taste out. I ordered a Large Dark Chocolate Turtle Mocha and a Small Coffee of the day with a shot of mint and room for cream. Instead of a small coffee of the day she gave me a large — although to be fair she charged me for a small but gave me a large. (Hard to complain about a free upgrade at no charge.)
The two barista’s who were making the coffee’s were chatting away and were slow to get to my coffee. My husband came out and we started to talk about the coffee (me explaining that I DID order a small — but they gave me a large.) and one of the barista’s decided to start a conversation with the back of my head about how lovely it was that it was Friday. I stopped talking to my husband and turned around and said «I am sorry– I missed that?» at which point she looked at the other Barista — then looked back at me and repeated herself. It was weird and somehow I felt bad about it — which is ridiculous in hind sight. I get that you guys are probably encouraged to engage customers in inane conversation — but don’t talk to the back at my head and interrupt my conversation and then get huffy with me when I seem confused.
The coffee’s were really good — but the atmosphere and the weirdness from the barista’s made the experience just an OK on my Caribou scale. I would stop in again for another cup — but I had no desire to linger.

I’ve been to Caribou Coffee at the airport, at the Mall of America, and probably a couple other shops, but this location is by my parents’ house and my sis — in — law has worked here more than once, so it’s the shop I’ve frequented the most. Caribou isn’t my favorite coffee in the world but it’s decent. The company is actively trying to compete with Starbucks as Biggest Coffee Chain Ever, so it has the same «It’s just OK but at least it’s consistent and easy to find» feel. Also, their branded products are clever and I like the logo and feel of the shops.
I will note that when I visited the Mall of America shop on this trip, the girl ringing us up was really confused and re-​rung the order at least twice. I think our drinks turned out fine in the end but it took much longer than necessary. Then, on my way back to SEA I decided to try a new Northern Lite Cooler (blended drink) at the airport, and as per usual, it was just OK.
If Caribou sounds vaguely familiar to my Seattle readers it’s because you can actually get a couple products out here, even though the coffee shops haven’t made it to the West Coast. I have seen Caribou snack bars and most recently bottled coffee drinks (distributed by Coke, no less) at grocery/​convenience stores. And maybe coffee beans, but I may be making that up. If my Seattle readers are very curious, check out the website, you can order plenty of different Caribou items.
Wifi is available at this shop. Other shops have a drive through and/​or meeting rooms. If you don’t want coffee there are fruit smoothies, tea and standard pastries available. Oh, Caribou also offers cold press coffee, which I think is unusual. I don’t like cold press but my brother is a big fan.
«Life is Short. Stay awake for it.»

I always enjoy the coffee and pastries, at any of the caribou stores. Quality, seems to be pretty consistent, throughout the chains. I like the comfy, slightly over-​sized chairs. the knotty pine décor, is also a nice, northwoods touch. all in all, i give caribou, a very solid reccomendation!

Great coffee and bakery for a chain coffeeshop, but two points:
1) as they’ve expanded, they’ve pretty clearly moved towards a «churning» model for for making money, and to that end, they subtly discourage you from hanging out. Most new stores I’ve been in have not-​especially-​comfortable seating, few outlets and you have to ask for a ticket at the counter if you want to use the wi-​fi for more than an hour. I put this down for the Grand Ave. shop, but it could just as easily be said of any of a dozen other Caribous.
2) My wife is allergic to nuts; she got an ostensibly nut-​free croissant here and started to go into anaphylaxsis about 30 minutes later. The best we can figure is that they’re sloppy about what goes where in the bakery.