In my more recent travels across various parts of Asia, what has really stood out to me is the uptake of coffee culture. As a result of this I was pretty excited to hear that Cotti Coffee, the third largest coffee chain in the world had finally decided to come to Brisbane. With an opening promo of $3.90 per drink, I was keen to try it out. Stopping on my way to work last week, I was happy to see that it was open and that there was essentially no queue at 7.30 in the morning.
The menu was more similar to a bubble tea store than I would have imagined. Only about half the drinks were coffee based and the other half were tea based. Notably their basic coffees regular retail for $3.50 to $4.90, which is a lot cheaper than other cafes in the city these days.
Given the discount and my desire to cover off on more than one drink in this blog post, I got two to go. In spite of the lack of queue, it still took a good 15 minutes for my drink to be prepared.
Starting off with the 16oz Cappuccino which I ordered with an extra shot. Interestingly, it came with no chocolate on the top at all which was already not a good starting point. They also offered no alternative milks so I had to settle for full cream (rather than skim). The coffee itself was almost non existent in taste with the beverage tasting pretty much like hot milk, despite the extra shot. It brought me back to the days of UQ when Darwins cafe literally forgot to put the shot of coffee into my beverage. Unfortunately given the colour of this drink, there most definitely was some form of coffee in it, it was just bland and tasteless. I had high hopes this would become my regular since it's fairly cheap but as it stands the 7-11 coffees taste better than this.
I thought it was a stroke of genius to have gotten a Grapefruit Americano to go as well. I had asked them for no added sugar but it turns out that the grapefruit syrup was already extremely sweet. The syrup itself tasted like artificial citrus flavouring and wasn't distinctly grapefruit flavoured. The beverage tasted a lot more like a low quality bubble tea than it did coffee, which was at best a minor hint.
Overall I was glad to have tried Cotti when I did. I am quite surprised at how poor their drinks offerings are. Perhaps we just have a very strong coffee culture in Australia but I would not recommend trying them out unless you want coffee that doesn't taste like coffee. Given the plethora of options nearby, I won't be back.
Price Range: $5 - $10pp
Taste: 3/10
Value: 4/10
Service: 8/10
Environment: 7/10
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