Portlandia Coffee Shop Manifesto

In 2004 I opened a different type of cafe than anyone had seen before. It quickly became clear that I needed to define what we are about, what we do, what we don’t do, and my expectations of customers. As my first foray into food service, I discovered there were a lot of bad behaviors that people brought with them, and I was going to help reform our little society. At some point I decided to put a short list of rules on the side of the espresso machine so customers wouldn’t inadvertantly make a faux pas. No espresso to go, no headphones, no cell phones - you know, basically acknowledge me as a human being and respect my coffee. At some point someone stole the rules, so we had to make new rules (thanks to Candice Steichen) and we added the rule, "No stealing the rules." Then Carrie Brownstein came in for coffee and got a kick out of our rules, and decided to make an episode of Portlandia about them. Then it was reported in the news that the sketch was based on the DoubleShot, and people started coming in just to see the rules. So I had to take down the rules. We’re about coffee; not rules. You can watch the Portlandia episode here. It's kinda funny. And see the actual rules (v2.0) below.