Stapenhill Cafe in East Staffordshire

Arrived yesterday evening. Check in quick and easy, except being advised to wait for someone to take our bags, which we did ourself. What I would say is, the staff are excellent, so hard working, whoever the management are, they need a large rocket, period. This place feels nice but the attention to detail is shocking. So we arrived on April 01st, who is the joker?! Queues of 20 minutes to get a drink ffs. Complained but didn’t really change anything. A la carte restaurants shut, nice one. Low and behold, today, the ice creams, 25 minute queue to be told no strawberry, vanilla or chocolate. I’m not rude but i did stop the server from chatting to his buddy as there were 25 people in the queue behind me. Joke. Overall £500 a week for here is good value, don’t expect anything more. Right on the beech.

Good service with nice decor and friendly staff. Good choice on menu hot and cold and I had a window shop in the cake area. Had Welsh Rarebit and Eggs Benedict and delicious. One poached egg slightly hard but as a person who doesn't make them as know it is hard to time consistency still good.

Proper old pub. Full of character. Has a lot of history too if your interested in that. The staff are very friendly and happy.

Being back in Burton for another pub crawl we thought we would look this place up again for probably the last time as it is due to close at the end of October in an act of complete vandalism by Molson Coors, showing a total lack of respect for brewing history by planning to redevelop the site for offices. Have these people no morals or respect? Clearly not. As for the tap room and restaurant itself, it’s a fairly sterile corporate affair but at least the hanging pub signs in the restaurant section does try and give it a bit of character. And in my experience the bar staff serving behind the bar have always given the impression that they are suffering for their profession and would rather be somewhere else. Although cannot comment on the food as we have never eaten here and again were only here for the tap bar bit, but can certainly pass judgement on the ale and in that respect the beer was very good, but then you would expect it to be as it is the official tap bar for the Heritage Brewery, embedded in the National Brewery Centre next door, and they don’t have to travel very far. The Tap bar has six hand pumps and for our visit these were dispensing the Heritage Brewery Masterpiece IPA, Heritage Gold, Charrington IPA and Oatmeal Stout as well as Draught Bass and Elgood black dog on as a guest. I went for the Oatmeal Stout. It is not one of the best tap rooms I have ever visited, but it is probably one of the most famous, so I will be very sad to see it go, if this act of vandalism is allowed to proceed by the local council and the local MP. If it is then the very soul of Burton on Trent will go with it.

Again to be clear. The serving team does a very good job. Attentive and Professional. Always it's clean. Range is very limited, poorly thought out Junk food menus. Could and should do so much better. Plastic cholesterol junk food. Any motorway cafe across Europe does so much better. Rail stations too. Equipment forever breaks down. Poor preventive maintenance. Poor planning. Poor group management. Uttoxeter Store staff are good, doing a great job. Let down by Cowboy Group Management and lack of support. Good Staff leave. Some healthier foods, and better equipment preventive maintenance getting a grip? Store team 5 stars. Costa 2. Costa needs to really up its game. Cowboy outfit. It should be so much better. Get a Chef review, what is possible? Could sell more and be more. Costa lot for not a lot. Costa innovate for God's sake. Support the stores. Look at the competition. Are you mentally wrapped in Missionary opposition? At least try face up. Could be so much better.