Pod

Food is quite expensive in comparison to other quick lunch alternatives.
It does taste good and is supposedly a healthier option although I wouldn’t always trust that as calories/​fat/​sugar values aren’t clear and visible on the full menu.

Well, you can’t say that there’s a sense of humour failure in the land of lunchtime chain management.
It’s brilliant you conceive a chain of places that sell bland staple topped with overly-​flavoured toppings, then rub a bit of health-​based marketing on it to make it seem more worthy and take your mind off the fact that it’s expensive middle-​of-​the-​road slurry.
For example, in the 3 visits I’ve made to this place I’ve tried their breakfast quinoa mango pot thing (which is essentially an underdelivering posh rice pudding), superfood yogurt pot (unpleasant yogurt topped with a bunch of stuff you’d never put near yogurt in a million years), and red chicken curry (box of rice topped with vivdly coloured and very strongly flavoured shredded chicken sauce, cosied up to by some beans or vegetables or some such nonsense).
The common theme in everything I’ve seen come out of the building is that it’s not so much food, as nutrition packs like you might feed to an astronaut, or prisoner.
But the glorious thing is they don’t even try to pretend that it’s anything other than nutrient paste — the place is called Pod!
Seriously though Pod consistently over-​promises and under-​delivers, and tries to bamboozle you into eating there on the premise that it’s somehow healthy, but doesn’t go to the trouble of being enjoyable and certainly gives being cheap a wide berth.
Their coffee’s among the worst chain coffee I’ve ever tried (worse even than Costa) and makes one wonder whether they’ve only provided it as a cynical money-​making add-​on because they know that office workers will grab a coffee out of habit/​convention without putting too much thought into what’s in their cups.

Nice breakfast. Good food. Friendly staff.