5589 Transit at Roll, E. Amherst, NY 14051
Web: Wilson Farms
Phone: 716.639.7528
Rating:
[learn more]Pros:
Least expensive coffee shop of the cheap chains offers sweet, easily appealing cappuccinos (lattes, really) and mochas, as well as a wide variety of other drinks, plus decent donuts.
Cons:
No drive-through option; you serve yourself all drinks, though quickly. Specialty drinks are heavily sugared, machine-prepared. Drip coffee wasn't that great.
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"The Coffee Cash concept reduces the total coffee transaction time to mere minutes, potentially shorter than the in-car waits at some of the competing coffee shops."
The idea that a Wilson Farms convenience store could be a serious player in the coffee business might seem strange to some; unlike many of its current competitors, it doesn't offer drive-throughs, employ coffee baristas, or even attempt to offer freshness guarantees. Yet thanks to smart, easily accessible locations that seem to be at strategic mid-points between where people live and work, and similarly streamlined ways to help customers select, customize, and leave quickly with their drinks - and donuts - Wilson Farms has been a viable, if niche player in the Western New York coffee scene for years. With the most aggressive pricing of any of the chain shops out there, it has the potential to become even bigger, assuming that its customers continue not to mind its shortcomings.
Sizing and Pricing: Wilson Farms' small coffee drinks come in 12-ounce cups, the same size as a McDonald's small, and larger than Tim Horton's or Dunkin' Donuts. However, the cup size is irrelevant if you buy Coffee Cash, the store's discount coffee coupon books, which come in $5 (five-coupon) and $9 (ten-coupon) packs. With one of these coupons, you fill any size of drink cup at the coffee counter, customize it as you prefer, and leave the coupon on the counter as you walk out. A current promotion lets you get a free donut - normally $0.89 - with any coffee purchase. Consequently, we bought a $5 coupon pack and left with three drinks, a donut, and two coupons for future use. This brought our total to $3 - the lowest price of any of these chains.
Frills: The single most impressive thing about Wilson Farms is the insane variety of coffees and flavors offered in many of its shops; between flavored creams, the eight or eleven thermos-style dispensers of hot coffee, and an array of machines that dispense cappuccinos - well, lattes - plus hot chocolate, frozen drinks, and so on, the only thing that these stores lack for is true gourmet coffee.
Oddities: Wilson Farms doesn't operate drive-through windows or coffee bars, so you need to get out of your car, assemble your drink yourself, and pay at the register. Still, the Coffee Cash concept reduces the total time for this whole process to mere minutes, potentially shorter than the in-car waits at some of the competing coffee shops. Additionally, the company's donut supply relationship with Krispy Kreme has ended due to the latter's financial issues and disappearance from the area, and Wilson Farms now apparently supplies a handful of donuts and pastries of its own.
The Plain Coffee: Our resident coffee critic Christina pronounced Wilson's plain coffee - here actually labelled as Kona Coffee - boring, stale, and not full-bodied, noting that the likelihood of the coffee being true 100% Kona, rather than a 10% blend, was very low. The cup was dissatisfying and not worth having again, but not as bad as Tim Hortons' version. There were ten other coffees to choose from, though, the only consistent issue being that they're all served out of thermoses and thus equally likely to be way lower in heat or freshness than freshly brewed joe elsewhere. The only thing worse is burnt coffee - again, see Tim Hortons for that.
The Cappuccino: From an accuracy standpoint, Wilson Farms shouldn't even be billing its drinks as cappuccinos; they have little to no foam. That said, the typical Wilson Farms offers somewhere between four and eight hot drinks that are billed as either cappuccinos or mochas depending on what's being stocked by the location. We ordered a French Vanilla Cappuccino that bore little resemblance to the others we tried, much heavier in sugar and milk content, and with a strong, slightly artificial vanilla flavor. It tasted good, but not like a cappuccino; it was more like a latte.
The Mocha: As with the cappuccinos, Wilson Farms offers mocha drinks that are spiked with chocolate and other flavors; we have been enjoying these drinks for years with little concern as to their accuracy or caloric content. This time, we tried a Peppermint Mocha, which was sweet, semi-strong on mint flavor, semi-strong on coffee, and light on chocolate flavor. It was good, but completely different from the McDonald's version, which was more accurate. While this and other Wilson Farms mochas stretch the definition of true coffee drinks, they're reliably tasty, in no small part because they're sugary, and they cost less than half the price of a McDonald's or Starbucks version if you can live without the pretty presentation.
The Donut: We were very familiar with the old Wilson Farms cases full of Krispy Kreme donuts, which for obvious reasons start out fresh at one point each day and become less and less impressive as the hours pass. Unfortunately, Wilson Farms no longer stocks those, or a simple dipped chocolate donut, so we got the next closest thing from the company's bakery - a Chocolate Dipped Boston Creme. It wasn't bad; we only got halfway through it at home before one of our dogs stole it and scarfed it down. Bad Roman, bad dog!
Rank and Conclusions: As its offerings are the least expensive of the bunch, Wilson Farms could potentially get away with offering the worst coffee and donuts around, but it doesn't - at least, not exactly. The compromises here are on freshness and service, such that you're best off visiting early if you want either drinks or food to be near their apex, and you'll need to assemble everything for yourself, which can be a bit of a chore if you like two creams, two packets of sugar, or other twists in your coffee. But many people, including us, will find these omissions entirely forgivable for the low prices, which guarantee you a huge cappuccino, er, latte in your choice of flavors for a buck or less. There's a reason we keep going back to Wilson Farms: as much as we enjoy the frilly, overpriced cold drinks at Starbucks, the hot, cheap ones here are satisfying, too.
