Einstein Brothers Bagels

Horrible service. Slow. Rude. Awful. And I love Einstein’s everyone else I’ve ever been. This one is uniquely bad.

The two best points of this little coffee shop are its convenience to Duke Hospital (good if you work there and are not a fan of Starbucks… yuck!) and the super friendly staff that work there. Other than that, this place doesn’t really have too much going for it. It closes way too early, the coffee is meh at best, and the menu is pretty limited.
However, it will do when you’re in a caffeine pinch, and when I say the staff is super friendly I mean it! They even offered me some free cookies!
If I wasn’t already looking like I’ve eaten too many free cookies recently, I just may have taken them up on that…

This coffee shop is located in the basement of the Childrens Hospital at Duke. I’ve yet to have any of the food but they offer bagels, sandwiches, and salads; mostly light fare. They offer hot and cold specialty coffee beverages and self-​serve coffee. They also have a cooler which offers «Simply» brand juices and various soft drinks.
According to the hospital staff, Einstein Bros. has taken over for the coffee shop that used to operate inside of Duke hospitals main cafeteria. I’ve been through the cafeteria and it looks like part of it is being remodeled. Perhaps they’re revamping the old coffee shop which is good because although Einsteins tastes okay, their hours are downright awful. They open at a decent time (6am I believe), but they close at 4pm and they’re not open on the weekends which is bad business move for a place that operates inside a hospital that’s open ²⁴⁄₇. That’s my only beef really.
The staff is pretty laid back and nice and quite funny; razzing the regular customers like myself. And last but not least, the coffee. The coffee here is pretty standard. The staff seems to be on the ball when it comes to knowing how long the self-​serve coffee has been out for and they appear to follow a strict protocol when making mixed drinks which usually come out pretty good.