Common Grounds Coffee House & Desserts

I love the quality of coffee, and the fact that the place is open at 7am. If you want a cute wall clock, check this place:)

Love this coffee shop! It is my "go to" in downtown Apex to meet up with people! The staff are so friendly and they make it feel like a neighborhood (everyone knows your name) kinda place! The Barista is my fav! He's always smiling, personable and great to chat with! The food and coffee are delish! Wish they were open later to enjoy dessert or coffee after my hubby and I go out on a date. Not many places to hang out at after 8pm!

I really wanted to try the iced lavender latte, so I called a few places in Cary, but no one seemed to have it. Finally, the barista at Coffee Grounds said she could make it since she had the lavender syrup, though it was not a typical menu item! I drove there and got it! The customer service was great. Thank you for going above and beyond to make the drink for me! Ya’ll are awesome at what you do.
For me personally, the lavender was too flowery/bitter, but I would have never known if I did not try it! In the future, I will stick to the iced coconut caramel latte.

This coffee shop has creamy, sweet ice cream and amazing coffee! It’s conveniently located facing the street, with the sun streaming in. The coffee is on the more expensive side, but the massive selection of goodies makes up for it. I will say that it is not always sensory friendly. There are many loud noises, people, flashy objects/decorations, etc. It was overstimulating to enter the store for the first time, and I had to take a minute to get my bearings. Once you adjust, order, and plug in earbuds though, it isn’t bad. The noise definitely dies down after 1 PM. The best ice cream, in my humble opinion, is the Orange Creamsicle, pictured below. Edit: I ran out of money and had wanted to get a frozen apple cider, later in the day, they brought me one for free!

Holy S&/$@×!! That is the best shortbread cookie I have had in years! And the blueberry- pomegranate smoothie 😋 💙 😍 Every time I come to N.C to visit my mom, I am coming here!
This is the Strawberry Smoothie & Shortbread cookie

This place is pretty neat and the coffee was really good! I enjoyed my Chai Tea Latte!

Coffee and ambiance are both pretty mediocre, and there's pretty much no food options unless you go with a muffin or a smoothie (which the person I was with couldn't even finish). There is quite a bit of seating both inside and outside which is nice.

Love common grounds! Best chocolate around ! Huge mug selection! Don't miss it if you're in downtown Apex!

Unfortunately didn’t get why the rating was so high. The place has a nice collection of cups but that’s it, coffee isn’t tasty at all.

Let me start out by saying that my wife and I love this place. Whenever we visit Downtown Apex we make a point to stop in here for great coffee or a dessert. In addition to the great products, we really enjoy the eclectic environment.

Here's where it all went south ...

We came in on Saturday afternoon and ordered 2 cold coffees ... a regular Carmel frappe and a regular vanilla frappe. My Carmel was superb, but my wife's vanilla frappe didn't taste quite right. It had a very strong aftertaste like a sugar free sweetener was used and not a strong vanilla taste. I tasted it too and got the same impression as well. When we told the barista that it didn't taste right he immediately got very defensive. He insisted that he didn't use any sugar free sweetener, but there's no masking the obvious aftertaste of a sugar free product. After the drama, my wife decided to get another flavor (carmel) at no charge and it was fine.

As I said before, we love this place and will continue to go back. I would rather support any small business instead of a large corporate chain every day of the week and twice on Sunday. However, it would be great to see a little humility when customers raise a concern about your product (especially when you're paying $6 for it). If this were a Starbucks, they would have gladly replaced the coffee without any hassle. I worked as a chef for many years and occasionally people would send back their food for various reasons. Instead of taking it personally, we would either recook it, or replace it with something else if requested. That's what keeps customers coming back.