Costa Coffee

This is a bit of a funny Costa, it appeared a couple of years go when they outsourced all the catering at the university. It’s right in the middle of the campus, a modern campus built in the soulless modern architecture way with little character or charm.
It sells the typical Costa range, and during term time is packed full with students for most of the day. The quality and service is like every Costa, although the students can make it a bit stifling at times, clearly with all the time in the world they’re in no hurry so the queue moves very slowly and they stay sat at the tables for a long period of time after their coffee is consumed. That’s what coffee shops are for so can’t really complain, but it does make getting a table quite hard.
Outside term time it’s fairly empty yet somehow lacks the relaxing feel of most Costas, probably not the fault of the Costa itself — more the overwhelming sense of isolation of the university campus in general. From the windows the view of the wharf is mostly blocked by student accommodation, however if you get the right seat you can actually get a good view over the water to the airport beyond, and watch the planes take off & land at City Airport.
Given the proximity of the university to the wharf (it’s right alongside it) they missed a good opportunity to line the wharf with the cafes and coffee shops, where you’d get a full view from inside and also there could be the option for outside seating which would be great on sunny days. However the university campus was poorly planned, and the opportunity missed.
Students and staff of the university get a 20% discount here, which sounds great at first but then you get the impression that actually they’ve just increased the prices by 20% and then given a «discount» to get them back down to normal again. It means passers by who have no alternative but to stop there get charged a surcharge effectively. I do have a personal annoyance with this also — as I and some of the other staff work full time on the campus but are not employed directly by the university they don’t give us the discount — despite that we’re here all year round and are basically the same as those employed directly. This seems very unfair.
All in all this Costa is somewhere you go due to lack of choice, rather than because there’s anything special about it. When there’s little competition in the local area a business like this doesn’t have to try very hard.