The Coffee Club's Cockroach Cannelloni

johnboy said :

Not to mention a business with more than 10 employees cannot be defamed.

Lawyers are now using alternative actions under torts including injurious falsehood. It’s a much high standard though to be met, not only showing harm to reputation but also showing malice and actual damages to the business. If business at the Belco Coffee Club dropped off soon after this was posted, could be an interesting case.

I didn’t know they put olives in canelloni.

i want to know why anyone bothered to go to somewhere called ‘coffee club’ – gotta be awful just from the moniker, no?

eyeLikeCarrots said :

S4anta said :

or…

get evidence before passing it over if you are a litigious whiny little ambulance chaser.

Gold. Split my coffee when I read that one.

—-

These sorts of discussions on RA interest me. I hope that there is some ‘fair comment’ defence in the defamation legislation to prevent Johnboy from getting chased by the franchise ?

There are several defences to Defamation. One of which is that what is being said is the truth. So as long as what is being said is the truth, it’s fine. Also, it is up to the defendant to prove that what is being said is not the truth.

Then there is the In the public’s best interest defence. Yeah, knowing you may get served cockroaches is in the public’s best interest.

An interesting third defence, where truth and best interest do not need to apply is if something is said in Parliament. So the guvvament pollys don’t need to fear being sued if they raise something in Parliament.

Either way, Johnboy and his legion of many minions has nothing to fear legally with a truthful statement made by someone.

Holden Caulfield said :

The first rule of Cockroach Club is, you do not talk about Cockroach Club.

GOLD! LOL

WillowJim said :

Can the original poster please explain why they wanted a photo? Was it because they:

1. wanted to post it on RiotACT;

For future reference, RiotACT has a history of good pictures taken of terrible food.
The cockroach pizza of Dominos Dickson
A Review of Sorts – Firestone Italian Restaurant

Can the original poster please explain why they wanted a photo? Was it because they:

1. wanted to post it on RiotACT;
2. enjoy confrontations and wanted to string it out as much as possible with head office, etc;
3. hope to score some sort of settlement payment from what was clearly an accident.

I hope it was No 1 and not the others.

Suprisingly, yes. I DID have issues with Coffee Club this weekend. I had eggs on toast and a skinny Mocha from the DFO store and wound up with gastro for the next two days 🙁

Believe it or not insects do like to eat human food from time to time. It`s hardly worth crying over. Just take the freebie and deal with it.

peterepete said :

I can see why you kicked up a fuss – it was in your partner’s food. Now if it was in your own I’m sure you’d just send it back and get the refund. I hope you earned some good points.

life imitating art: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Tl8KDVs7E#t=2m14sec

Pork Hunt said :

I’d rather go to Harbucks any day…

I’d rather go next door for some of Tweek’s coffee.

I can see why you kicked up a fuss – it was in your partner’s food. Now if it was in your own I’m sure you’d just send it back and get the refund. I hope you earned some good points.

There’s a very important question noone has asked yet: how much did the cockroach eat?

I’d rather go to Harbucks any day…

Although having a roach in your meal is unacceptable, I am curious as to why you are carrying on so much about the manager? By the sounds of it he did everything he could to sort out the issue.

As for the issue he could well be right it came from the manufacturer, you don’t seriously expect food like that to be cooked on-site. In which case I have no doubt the coffee club would be as appalled as you by your find, yet you come here just to slag them off.

My bad.

Please note: My above comment was (of course) my own personal opinion, based upon my individual experiences, which I was expressing in the interest of the public…

😉

That is meant to be doesn’t taste any worse.

It may be a little on the higher side but doesn’t seem any higher or taste any better to me than the majority of independant cafes in Canberra.

Frankly, without a photo, I don’t believe the OP.

🙂

Marvin_78 said :

Jim Jones said :

Marvin_78 said :

The Coffee Club is awful regardless.

Substandard food/coffee at premium prices.

Why anyone would go there in the first place is beyond me…

The food may be substandard (can’t comment on this, I’ve only eaten there once, and it was fine), but the prices certainly aren’t particularly high.

$15 – $20 for an amazingly crap sandwich certainly is high in my books…

Yep, that’s high. Doesn’t seem right though – I vaguely remember having a bacon and egg roll and a cup of coffee for around a tenner.

S4anta said :

or…

get evidence before passing it over if you are a litigious whiny little ambulance chaser.

Gold. Split my coffee when I read that one.

—-

These sorts of discussions on RA interest me. I hope that there is some ‘fair comment’ defence in the defamation legislation to prevent Johnboy from getting chased by the franchise ?

Jim Jones said :

Marvin_78 said :

The Coffee Club is awful regardless.

Substandard food/coffee at premium prices.

Why anyone would go there in the first place is beyond me…

The food may be substandard (can’t comment on this, I’ve only eaten there once, and it was fine), but the prices certainly aren’t particularly high.

$15 – $20 for an amazingly crap sandwich certainly is high in my books…

it’s all turning out positive with the coffee club adding a new dish to the menu today!

http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Roach-sandwich-300×157.jpg

Bah! Screw the Coffee Club!

More broadly screw crappy Canberra customer service.

Went to Sydney shopping with the missus recently and noticed a marginal improvement in the general quality of service and demeanor of staff.

jadie360 said :

to which I replied a firm “No. The plate stays here” as I wanted to take a photo

why? to send to ACA for your 15 minutes?

As the Distibutor said, “I wish you had of taken a photo so that we can prove whether it actually came from us or the Coffee Club”. Seeing as the Distributor is in QLD and insects vary from region to region this would have been a great help.

Quince said :

I have breakfast there occassionally and I’ve never had an issue with their food.

I don’t understand why you didn’t take the money – dodgy meal that you didn’t eat = give me money back! Unless, as others have suggested, you’re hoping for greater compensation…

Firstly we were in shock, feeling ill and just wanted to get out of there. Secondly the Manager said he would refund one meal out of the two meals. We did not feel this was an adequate resolution as we both got up and left the Coffee Club immediately.

Mothy said :

Assume the ACT Health Inspector will attend not just the Coffee Club outlet in question, but the Distributor’s preparation site?

Definitely. According to the Distributor, Helen’s European Cuisine, the Health Inspector attended their location in QLD yesterday. He also said that the Coffee Club wouldn’t provide him with a batch number or anything to so that he had no idea what batch had even been affected.

The Distributor himself told me that he was not in any way impressed with the way the Coffee Club had chosen to resolve the issue as it is impacting directly on his business. He told me that the Belconnen store owner wanted nothing to do with the problem and had palmed the issue off to their head office to be resolved.

For the record the Manager was a young guy, with a full head of hair, that handled the incident very well and has been the only positive for the Coffee Club in this whole experience. He had obviously been trained well in how to handle that kind of situation.

Most people I know that eat at coffee clubs around Canberra aren’t happy – hair or occasionally insects in their food or undercooked/overcooked meals, way too long to get meals etc etc etc

I wanna know why you didn’t get your money back – coffee club meals are way overpriced.

overreact much?

it is certainly disgusting to find that in your food, but accept the refund and move on.

Holden Caulfield said :

The first rule of Cockroach Club is, you do not talk about Cockroach Club.

Classic!

I will never go to a Coffee Club ever again after one of the staff at the DFO coffee club sneezed into her hand and then proceeded to place a plastic lid on my cappacino. I just handed it back and said ‘no thanks’.

Serves me right for trying to buy a coffee made by a 15 year-old.

Don’t underestimate the importance of an insect being found in a food item. The basis for modern tort law all came about from a snail being found in a bottle of ginger beer. (Donoghue v Stevenson)
The stores buy these sorts of things in frozen so it’s the manufacturer who has some explaining to do.

As for the prices, Coffee Club are shocking. $18 for a toasted sandwich… oh, I’m sorry… open grill. Get real.

gnomnamne said :

Was the manager bald by any chance?

Yes, the cockroach ate his hair.

Marvin_78 said :

The Coffee Club is awful regardless.

Substandard food/coffee at premium prices.

Why anyone would go there in the first place is beyond me…

The food may be substandard (can’t comment on this, I’ve only eaten there once, and it was fine), but the prices certainly aren’t particularly high.

Oh ick! Sorry to hear that but it seems you’ve done everything you can do.

Was the manager bald by any chance?

Assume the ACT Health Inspector will attend not just the Coffee Club outlet in question, but the Distributor’s preparation site?

Agree with banjo – this stuff happens. Though this one time, not at all near a band camp, my brother was eating scrambled eggs from a cafe, and assumed they had accidentally left some egg shell in there. Thinking nothing more of the crunchiness of his scrambos, he kept right on chewing till there was blood in his mouth. Turns out someone had broken a glass in the kitchen.

Curious why the OP didn’t take the refund offered?

The Coffee Club is awful regardless.

Substandard food/coffee at premium prices.

Why anyone would go there in the first place is beyond me…

I have breakfast there occassionally and I’ve never had an issue with their food.

I don’t understand why you didn’t take the money – dodgy meal that you didn’t eat = give me money back! Unless, as others have suggested, you’re hoping for greater compensation…

Was the cockroach inside the cannelloni, or was it in the sauce? Or a side salad? It’s not completely clear in your story but it sounds like it made it’s way into the food somewhere in the offsite food prep/distribution process. Agreed it’s pretty gross, but it’s quite hard to feel like the franchise has done anything wrong in this situation.

or…

get evidence before passing it over if you are a litigious whiny little ambulance chaser.

The first rule of Cockroach Club is, you do not talk about Cockroach Club.

I don’t know why but I always give people the benefit of the doubt with these things, if I find something unsanitary in my food (hair is the usual one) I let the staff know but I am not generally phased by it. These things happen and insects in your food is one of those things that’s not always easy to control. At the end of the day, unless I find a hypodermic needle in my scrambled eggs or a pack of thumbtacks in my pasta it’s just one of the non harmful but potentially unsettling risks of eating food you haven’t prepared yourself. I suggest you watch some Man vs Wild, you will then see future cockroaches as a good source of protein rather than unhygienic food preparation! 🙂

Sounds to me like the OP was looking for a lottery win here. Well, outside a scumbag gutter-feeding lawyer’s office, in this country at least, the presence of a cockroach in a meal is cause for concern but not something that you need to suffer dizzy spells, headaches and feelings of inadequacy leading to social exclusion etc. Therefore, the notion of taking a photo of the offending dish to a no win no fee lawyer has rightly been dealt with by the manager.

As for the business concerned: sounds to me like an unfortunate once-off that can happen to any business. If there had been other reports of contamination from this business over a month or so, there would be cause for community concern, but from the sound of it it is a once off. The ACT Health Inspector will attend the premises and check for unsatisfactory aspects.

As long as humans eat food that is attractive to insects, and as long as insects retain the ability to slide into unbelievably small gaps, instances such as this will happen. It’s not probable, it’s inevitable. Businesses do what they can to minimise the probablities but no business other than an irradiation laboratory can ever be 100% sure that it won’t happen to them.

Personally I would have accepted that the business was as surprised and as horrified as you were and left it at that.

clp said :

Its pretty yuck – but it seems as though they handled it as best they could – what more do you want them to do?

+1

Westfield Belconnen has a cockroach infestation in the food court.

Doesn’t surporsie me in the least to hear someone has bugs in their food.

to which I replied a firm “No. The plate stays here” as I wanted to take a photo

why? to send to ACA for your 15 minutes?

Was it cooked?

Its pretty yuck – but it seems as though they handled it as best they could – what more do you want them to do?

Extra protein, quit whining.

Mmmmmmmm, crunchy.

I’m pretty sure that everyone has at one time or another eaten cockroach embedded in a meal, whether they’ve known it or not. Not that that makes it any less disgusting seeing a cockroach in the meal you’ve paid good money for.