Let me tell you about the Coffee Union having been forced to use this on many occasions due to the location so the office where I work.

What is the Coffee Union

Well let me tell you, the coffee union is a Liverpool based company with five Coffee Shops located in the City centre, well that's what they say, however, I would say 4 in the City centre and 1 outside the City centre. The first shop was opened in 1998 on Bold Street in Liverpool and the business has expanded from there. The Coffee Union buys is beans direct from the plantation cutting out the middle man and where possible they use Rainforest Alliance and Organic beans

What does the Coffee Union provide

Well as you may have guest this is something along the line of Starbuck or Café Nero, and they sell coffee along with sandwiches and a few other items, but more about their food later.

Which branch are we looking at

The one I want to tell you about is the Coffee Union located at the Princes Dock, the Docks are now no longer in use and have been converted in to a business /leisure section on the outskirts of the City centre. I would say that to open a branch of the Coffee Union here was inspired as they have a captive audience, there are three main office buildings on the waterfront side of the Princes dock and I work in the one that is the furthers away from any cash point, newsagent or in fact anything resembling a normal City centre shop and in one building alone there are in the region of 1000 staff all working for various companies. This outlet is on the ground floor of one of the buildings and is only very small but sufficient to corner the market in the area. There is seating for about 16 people if you want to eat in the café part or as most customer do they but to take out.

What do they sell

Well naturally coffee, from your cappuccino and latte to your mocha frappe you name it, they will make it for you. There are frappes with different flavours, vanilla, chocolate, rum essence to name but a few and of course - coffee. Now you can but these in normal or grande sizes, drink in, take out you name it, they have it covered but you can also buy a packet of their beans to take away to grind yourself at home for that lovely fresh tasting cup of coffee. There are also a wide variety of tea on offer so the tea drinkers out there will not be disappointed.

Enough of the drinks, lets get onto the food. Now with your coffee you can buy a sandwich, a baguette, a toastie or a wrap - but I will warn you these are expensive, today I did not make any lunch and as it was raining and did not fancy the 15 minute hike into town to the nearest decent sandwich shop I opted for the Coffee Union and for your basis tuna mayo sandwich with a token gesture of lettuce leaf, flat lettuce at that and not a hit of cucumber I paid £2.75 and the sandwich was nothing special at all, was it dolphin friendly naturally farmed tuna I could not tell you and there is no indication anywhere to say that this is the case. A can of coke, I suppose is not too bad at 69p but I can get this elsewhere for 55p no problem in the City centre. Now to tell you about the choice of fillings in the sandwiches, well if you don't like cheese then you as basically stuck apart for the occasional tuna or egg mayo sandwich. Generally you get a baguette with the normal offer of fillings being, goats cheese with pesto and vine tomato, brie and black grape, cheddar cheese salad, oh a non cheese one, chicken with olive oil and some strange dressing or beef or ham, but non of them are really plain and nearly all come with pesto, oil, mustard or something obscure. For the vegetarians out there they also sometimes, in addition to the egg mayo and cheese combinations have humus and roasted veg, the roasted veg can also be found with most other fillings on some day. Average cost of a baguette is in the region of £3.00 some are slightly less and some are more it really depends on what is in it.

Now I must tell you that these sandwiches are not made on site and they do not have any facilities to make a sandwich to order so if you are a fussy eater you starve or walk into the town centre.

Toasted sandwiches - quite a lot of choice here and a bit more plain from cheese, onion and tomato, to the fancy cajun chicken with strange dressing available on white, brown or granary with a starting price for the cheese onion and tomato at £2.25,

Soup - all bought in again but it is one of the higher quality soups and fresh, well as fresh as you can get out of a carton. Typical flavours are tomato and basil, carrot and coriander, leek and potato, parsnip or some veg variety, again these are not cheap and a soup on its own with no bread is £2.20, with bread add 35p for the same amount of soup that you would get in a Heinz can of soup for a fraction of the price.

Also on offer are baked potatoes which can be ordered at the till with normal fillings that you would expect to see, cheese, coleslaw, beans.

Now for the service. In the Princes Dock branch they have had a high turnover of staff and it seems recently that every couple of weeks there is somebody new in there. This maybe explains the quality of the service. Often if the shop is busy, more than 5 people in the queue and it appears that everything goes into meltdown mode and utter chaos ensues, particularly if you have ordered something hot. Now if I am getting a toastie then you collect your toastie from the open counter, take it to the till, pay for it and it is passed into the kitchen at the back for toasting, this is where things start to go wrong. Whilst waiting for your toastie you have to pay careful attention to what is being brought out from the kitchen and remember what you have ordered ,quite a few times my lunch has been given to somebody else who arrived after me and ordered something completely different, also sometimes I am convinced that they have no idea what they are doing. The hot orders do not come out in the order they went in in anyway and its no wonder that the staff are confused, there is no numbering system for orders or a ticket system just pure guesswork of standing at the end of the counter and shouting (most don't shout and speak quietly) 'cheese, tomato and onion toastie on white' and just giving it to the 1st person that acknowledges them.

Now they do have some good points, whilst you are waiting there are plenty of free newspapers for you to browse through, but do keep that ear out for your order or you could be waiting a long time.

My general op

Overpriced, not very efficient, not very organised and really could do with some lessons on how to learn what is on their sandwiches. Would I buy my lunch from their again, well yes, only because I am forced to when the weather is horrendous and there is nowhere else to go and the taste is OK. I must say that I do look at how many people are waiting in the queue and how many are lingering awaiting hot orders before I select a toastie or baked pot as I know it will be wrong as this happens all the time. As to what the other 4 branches in Liverpool are like I cannot possibly comment as I have never visited them but I expect all outlets to the the same and serve the same products, the coffee is nice though.