Muffin Break

I generally like this café — me and my partner often have a pre dinner coffee here on a Friday but today’s visit was less than satisfactory — closing half the seating when the place is still busy and burnt coffee. Feeling a little let down :(

This is the second time I’ve visited Muffin Break in the Trinity Centre in Leeds. These days I don’t get to visit Leeds all that often but I’m keen to return here whenever I do (I’m pleased that a branch has now opened much closer to where I live now but I haven’t tried it yet).
The first time I visited was around lunchtime, they’d recently opened and the queue was enormous. To cope with the sudden influx of customers they invited me to take a seat and they would bring me my order (they don’t normally do table service, I gather). The wait was slightly longer than I’d hope but they were just finding their feet so I’ll forgive them. My coffee was large and well made and my blueberry muffin was perfect.
My more recent second visit was early on a Saturday morning. Almost no customers this time so they had time to sign me up for their loyalty card (love a good loyalty card) which offers a free coffee when you’ve bought five. Good excuse to visit my more local branch. As much as I love blueberry muffins I was tempted instead by a ricotta, raspberry and hazelnut option — who wouldn’t be? My friends ordered blueberry and triple chocolate and we were all very happy.
My new mission is to work my way through the rest of the muffin menu. Could take a while but I think I’ll manage it somehow.

If you wan’t to know how to run a cake shop, certainly don’t ask the people here — I hate to be negative but on my recent review, I have had the experience from hell!
As my nearest Muffin Break is Wigan/​Leeds, I never get chance to visit, but before I came, I was so excited to taste my beloved muffins again and claim my free loyalty coffee — little did I expect, I would be ripping the loyalty card off my keyring in disgust, in the following days.
My experience at the till waiting was nothing like «The best service» they pride themselves on, they was a large queue, however it should not of been a problem for a big name who maybe get staff to go along the line to take their order, or at least take the orders and then serve, rather than wait for everyone infront of you to be served and their food to be given — I felt exhausted by the time I left.
I ordered a Caramel Latte, which was quite nice with 4 «gluten free «cupcakes, they was an offer on which made it a much better deal to get 4 rather than the 2 I was going to get.
I admit the cupcakes were nice, especially the Treble Chocolate one, they were quite rich and filling, I also got an Apple and blueberry one (or something like that) which was OK, but not fantastic.
On the train home, I began to feel very ill and experience gluten like symptoms, which were indeed from the muffins, I was very upset, a brand I once loved and recommended had done this to me.
I did immediately phone head office however they never replied to my voice mail which meant I had to reply to them days later, I phoned both the store (seemed very good about being gluten free) and head office who put me in touch with the franchisee, he did offer me a free cupcake and coffee, however as I have no plans to visit Leeds and Wigan in the near future, and that I wasn’t willing to visit this chain again after their disgraceful acts, I had to reject this and as they made me very ill, I have no choice but to give this store 1 star. Eating gluten when being coeliac, can cause a rather nasty list of symptoms and possibly Cancer in the long term, so I can’t be too lenient with an incident like this, and although for the food 1 star isn’t fair, as I did get nasty reactions, which meant taking nearly a week off wor, I have to give 1 star.