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| - I seem to find myself at Paradise Bakery an awful lot!
And not just this one...while not as ubiquitous as the dreaded MickieD empire, PB's are everywhere!
I know this because I have the PB Frequent Flyer Card and about every 4th time I go...to any of the PB's...I get free coffee and a free muffin:)
Yay...
I met my erstwhile business partners there for meeting last week and realized that of all the hundreds of thousands of times that I have been here, I have yet to Yelp about it...it's that much a part of the background noise:)
So let's raise PB above the background clutter and give them a once over:)
There are certainly things to like about PB:
- Free Muffins, now and then
- Free Coffee, now and then
- The places are all pretty clean
- I always know where to find the spoons, napkins, etc. (PB's are injection molded from the same pattern, all of them are reasonably attractive and look almost identical...much like the line up in any Miss America Pageant:)
- Free wifi and plug-in's for my computer
- Prices are decent, esp. when you factor in the free stuff from the Frequent Flyer Program
There are also a couple of things that I don't like, so very much:
- If I am in the mood for a buffet or a deli, I don't mind doing the line thing, but here it feels like the lunch line in junior high...don't know why...the food is generally better than junior high was, but still:) Perhaps it's the snood's they make all the food prep workers wear...don't need hairs in my soup:)
- A few more booths for quiet conversation wouldn't hurt...the sound level at a table in the middle of the room can reach "roadwork" levels pretty quickly.
- The food...OK, yes...it's all reasonably fresh but that should be a given...a minimum standard, even at this level:) The preparation is generally haphazard at best and is often stupidly flawed...even simple changes give them fits ("no onions on my salad please"..."here you go sir, an all onion salad":) "have a nice day":)
All in all, the various PB's are an average dining experience...there are better bakeries, better sandwich shops and better coffee houses...maybe that's their service...combining all of the above into one big old average, comfortable spot to sit and drink free coffee, eat free muffins and read and write my electromail:)
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