Peet’s Coffee and Tea

Greatest coffee. Coffee gets mores stars, cost less bucks. Service is much better as well.

This isn’t one of those hipster «we drip coffee through 18 different chilled funnels before we put it in your cup» types of places. The coffee isn’t the best I’ve ever had, and there’s probably way too much sugar in the syrups that I add to my peppermint mochas. I’ll likely end up with diabetes by the time I’m 40. However, this Peet’s still gets a 5 star review from me, since every time I come in to grab a morning drink (and sometimes an afternoon and evening one depending on the day), I’m greeted by a genuine, friendly smile, and sometimes multiple of them depending on the time of day (they seem to have increased staffing at busy times of day to catch up with the hoards of zombified nurses and doctors who drag themselves up to the counter at 7:45 AM). There is no hipster «I’m better than you» air here, just actual nice people. Chatting with the baristas at Peet’s is a great way to start (and end) a shift.
I only wish they were open on Sundays and holidays, but I’ll take what I can get.

So first of all, kudos to MIHS for providing easy access to America’s most popular drug. I’m sure that providing an easily accessible IV line of productivity-​boosting caffeine to its employee’s was purely to increase employee and customer satisfaction, with absolutely no ulterior motive.
I’m not complaining. Having a coffee shop in a hospital is good for everyone. Good for the doctors who have to stay alert and focused, good for the nurses who need something to fill the void from not getting enough kudos for their work, and good for the cops who otherwise would probably be sleeping. And especially good for the patients and administrators, who benefit from all of the above.
So why 3 stars? First of all, Peet’s isn’t top-​notch coffee. Lattes are overly sweet and cause massive insulin spikes and frappacinnos are a little watery. This isn’t a huge deal, since just having a mediocre coffee shop is a big step up from not having one at all. And really, no one expects truly gourmet coffee in a hospital lobby. The primary metric for a hospital coffee shop isn’t creativity or superior product quality, it’s plain, simple functional utility.
And the utility is really where Peet’s in MIHS is lacking. Service is very slow and spotty and often understaffed. At 2 in the afternoon, right when people are leaving or coming onto their shifts, there is often only one barista responsible for both running the register and making the drinks. Occasionally they’ll be inexplicably closed during peak hours, like from 2:30 PM to 3 PM. Employees in the health sector aren’t given long breaks, and most doctors don’t get any breaks. Inefficiency like this is not only a terrible business decision for Peet’s, but it’s also incredibly frustrating for employees of MIHS who often only have one opportunity to grab a cup of coffee to show up in the middle of the day to find it closed. Whatever they’re doing could probably be done at night.
The hours are also atrocious. Considering they are in one of the few places in Phoenix where there are large numbers of people working round the clock, one would expect them to be open ²⁴⁄₇. Instead, they close in the afternoon and don’t open on Sundays. Peet’s, you have a captive consumer base 7 days/​week, round the clock. EXPLOIT IT.
Other than the marginal coffee, the slow service, the inefficiency and the poor hours, this isn’t such a bad place. It would be nice if they were less mediocre, but I suppose mediocrity is better than not having coffee at all.