The single most useful thing to know about contacting Mugg & Bean is that the online form makes you pick your outlet from a dropdown list before it will send. Everything routes by outlet. If you cannot name the one you visited, the form will not accept the message and nobody can trace what happened.

The routes Mugg & Bean publishes

Work out which format you were in

The dropdown mixes two very different things, and the names tell you which. A plain mall name is a sit-down restaurant. Anything ending OTM is Mugg & Bean On The Move — the smaller grab-and-go format, very often inside a Total garage, an airport terminal or a Pick n Pay. LS and Satellite mark sub-formats of those. Menus, prices and what is even on offer differ between the two, so a complaint about a missing item at an OTM kiosk should not be filed against the full restaurant of the same name.

The list is not only South Africa

The same dropdown carries Gaborone Airport, Walvis Bay, Wernhil and Village Market alongside the South African outlets. If your visit was outside South Africa, pick the actual outlet rather than the nearest South African one.

There are separate menus, and Halaal is one of them

Rewards, gift cards and the coffee subscription

The loyalty app, digital gift cards and the coffee subscription are handled online rather than at a till, and a query about any of them is a head office matter rather than something the outlet manager can fix. Say which one it is in the Subject field, because the outlet dropdown will otherwise send it to a restaurant that cannot help.

Opening a Mugg & Bean

Franchising has its own section on the website with its own enquiry route. Use that rather than the general form. Be ready for the standard checks: a franchisor will want proof of unencumbered capital before it discusses a site, and anyone offering to secure you a Mugg & Bean franchise for a fee is not the franchisor.

If nothing comes back