I had this coffee shop bookmarked for a long time and was excited to try it for the first time. This is my first Yelp review, because I've never before felt so strongly about a food place that I felt compelled to review it. This is an unfortunate exception.
The incredibly rude, verbally violent response that the owner, Jaime, gave me and my friend was absolutely uncalled for. We bought coffee and sat down, prepared to drink coffee with some bagels we had brought in from outside to have a nice breakfast. There are no signs that say you cannot eat outside food - we had no idea. But the first thing the owner did without warning was come from behind us, and yell and curse at us angrily. Shaken, we put the bagels back into the bag.
We sat for a while, uncertain what to do, because I get really shaky and light-headed when I drink coffee without food. After sipping some more of our coffee drinks, we tentatively pulled the bagels out of the bag again and put them in front of us. We didn't start eating them, still feeling uneasy about that previous yelling, but didn't know what to do because we still had all this coffee to finish that we couldn't take with us (because they were in nice glass cups) to eat our food outside of the shop. [We were certainly not trying to be bad customers - I even brought my laptop with the intention of doing work, but seeing that no laptops were allowed, I scratched that plan.]
Immediately, the owner stormed over, grabbed both our coffee drinks from our table, spilling them on the table and splashing us with drops of latte, and dumped them at the counter. He was screaming at us, "GET OUT. Never show your faces here again. I know your faces. You're banned from here forever." (not that we ever would come back, so that was quite a useless display of power). Then he threw $7 at us, threw my friend's bagel outside, and left. His staff then told us again that we needed to leave, with no apology, as if this kind of behavior is acceptable.
In short, if we were white men, instead of Asian women, this likely would have not occurred. The verbal violence that the owner Jaime displayed towards us could undoubtedly have escalated to physical violence, and left both of us shaken.
