Hi there,

 

Sorry to be a pain but I thought I’d drop you guys a quick note about a purchase I made at your Mt Druitt store this afternoon.

 

My mother and I bought two large iced coffees, a sausage roll and a spinach & feta pastry.  The coffees were great (as they always are) but the food was without a doubt the most disgusting things I have ever tasted.

 

Firstly, the spinach and feta pastry.  There was no seasoning whatsoever – not even the faintest skerrick of salt.  I understand that some people are required to eat a salt-reduced diet but flavour has to come from somewhere and there wasn’t anything in that pastry to provide it in any good way.  Some green substance that I presume might have been either spinach or silverbeet (but which tasted rather like grass) did little to cover the soggy white rice which had been used to bulk it out.  There were little white chunks of what I assume might have been feta cheese but which could easily have been tofu or minced ceiling insulation for any flavour they may have had.  I think I managed to eat about two mouthfuls before calling it quits, which was a shame because it was the first thing I’d eaten all day and by 2pm I was STARVING.  I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten something as revolting as that pastry.

 

Until, that is, I got to the sausage roll.

 

Now, my mother was the one that ordered the sausage roll and, to its credit, it sure looked tasty.  However, it tasted….very peculiar.  Again, there was no detectable salt used in its manufacture, which was odd because I can only assume that sugar was used at some point.  The meat-product in the centre (and I’m being rather generous even using the term “meat”) had no particular flavour but it was faintly sweet.  I have had service-station rolls at 3am during a long road-trip into the middle of no-where that were probably out of date and had been in the warming cabinet for so long that they resembled leather – and they tasted better than your sausage roll.  And for heavens sake, people!!!!  How the heck do you muck up a sausage roll?  It’s got to be the easiest thing on earth!!  The No-Name jumbo packs of party specials that you pick up at Bi-Lo are better quality than your product.  Plus, I get a packet of six for the price of your one AND they microwave into something resembling pastry and meat rather than the gloopy mass that we were served.

 

So, a couple of  questions.

 

Does anyone at Gloria Jean’s actually eat or check the products that are sourced in and served??

 

Does Gloria Jean’s source the absolute cheapest product or are you guys actually paying a premium for something that bad?  (No really – I’m perfectly serious!  If it’s the cheapest thing out there, I can completely understand – profit margins being what they are lately.  But if it’s not, then you’re being ripped off badly.)

 

Kind regards, etc etc etc

(The above letter was sent through to Gloria Jean’s today and I am waiting to hear back from them.  Any reply they care to make will be posted as soon as it is received)(Assuming that it is not, in fact, a cease-and-desist letter).