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2011-01-08
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Stop #8 of my yogurt shop reviews. I will make this one quick since I've already had Tuttimelon back in the U.S. I noticed a slight difference in the taste, but it's been over a year since I've had the original TM, I'm not able to trace the exact difference. This yogurt is probably one of the better froyo I've had in HK. I could taste the difference from a number of the other local shops that use powdered yogurt and unfresh milk. But the focus of this review will be completely different tha
I actually really wanted to give this shop my highest marks since I thought it would compare to the US franchises, but my main complaint is that the staff don't seem to be maintaining the machines. This is self-serve so it's relatively fun and easy to figure out the flavors. I dispensed the yogurt and it came out LIQUIDy! After some liquid, the hardened yogurt came out, but I was so upset that I would have to pay by weight and pay for liquid that I wouldn't even eat (or drink)! I told the staff (a girl who was standing outside in their black T-shirt) about the problem, and she didn't really seem to understand English possibly, but she just told me I have to pump more, but did nothing about the fact that I had a practically a bowl of liquid in my cup. I believe other Tuttimelon franchises would have properly trained staff to give me a new cup or even give me a free froyo for this, but I guess HK is different so to me there's little difference between this shop and a local shop, except that they are using better yogurt base.
Based on my experience at Yogurtland, liquid yogurt happens because there's leftover (old) froyo left in the machine handle/tap, so this comes out first. But those staff (in the US shops) are trained to clean the tap. Maybe I was there on a slow day since there didn't seem to be as many people as I expected so maybe the machines were not being maintained enough. In either case, the staff seemed too occupied among themselves (and what might have been celebrities) to worry about me and other the customers. The girl at the machines and the cash register also seemed very tired and not smiling, which seemed uncharacteristic of these shops, but again, maybe it's because I'm not a celebrity. I've heard this shop gets many celebrities so I guess they don't care about normal, ordinary customers. This happened in the U.S. with other chains that went out of business so I am going to make a point of focusing this review on the fact that they want to be so cool, that their poor customer service will hurt their business. It's not quite like the TuttiMelon shops in the US and it's a shame. Well, so far, cool, rather than good yogurt, service and hygiene seems to be working in HK so far. But I find it unacceptable. Sorry I couldn't focus on the yogurt, which is actually above average, but poor service, poor hygiene and poor maintenance of machines really gets me upset.
Oh, and because I wanted to try all of the flavors, of course I spent over double the price of what I wanted, including the melted yogurt in the total weight. No doubt, I'll be back again, but only to see if they've improved and they are lucky to have good flavors which will force me to see what new flavors they have, but I'll be ready for their service (or lack of).
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