We have had the pleasure of having Jeff Ott come by and play free shows for us from time to time (he was actually the first person to play a show at Coffee to the People after we opened).  He came by again recently and had a great show.  Check out this clip on YouTube of Jeff playing "Sweet Distraction" at our place in Oct. 2006:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=55lMmqGCLQQ

AOL Cityguide has released the nominees for its CITY'S BEST 2007, and Coffee to the People is on the list.  Voting runs through Jan. 12, 2007.

Let's see if we can get Coffee to the People to be #1!

Here's the link:

http://cityguide.aol.com/sanfrancisco/bestcoffeehouses

CTTP isn't the best known coffeehouse in the city, and we know we are outspent on advertising and promotion by other San Francisco cafes, but we think the support of our loyal customers can help put us on top.  Please help us spread the word (and the link!).

Thanks,

Bob, Christine, Melissa, Karin, Megan & the Whole Crew at CTTP

One of the things we think about all the time is how to create and maintain a sense of community at our coffeehouse.  One of the main strengths of San Francisco is its reputation for having a strong sense of community and for being a city that cares.  My family's goal in opening Coffee to the People was for it to be a center for our neighborhood community, a quintessential San Francisco coffeehouse that respects what the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood stands for. So I was a little saddened when I recently received an e-mail from someone who found our cafe, and indeed our city, lacking in that very sense of community.

Are we becoming more self-absorbed, preferring to live our intellectual lives through the windowpane of our notebook computers or holed up in books instead of interacting with our neighbors and others who come to this neighborhood looking for real, warm-blooded, face-to-face, human interaction?

What do you think Coffee to the People can do to foster a stronger sense of community and social interaction for those who visit our shop? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Meanwhile, this heart-felt message, and my response (both dated November 4, 2006), may be of interest. Here is the message:

hey folks,

I think your coffee house is totally cool, I really love the things you people stand for (as stated in your "Philosphy"), as well as the way you've decorated the place, but I don't think I'm ever coming back there again. Not because of anything your establishment did, or is responsible for -but because as is always the case whenever i go to a coffee house in the City I think should be a real cool place where people come to get together, socialize, and just give love to each other, this turns out NOT to be the case. In the hour or so that I was there today, tho I made it a point to sit in what should have been a kind of "community area", as soon as anyone else sat down, they'd bury their nose in either a book, or whip out a laptop, or put a pair of headphones on. The only time people ever intereacted was if they already knew each other prior to arriving. AS is always the case here in Berkeley, people did not interact with anyone outside of theri own race. Say what you'd like about the Bay areas supposed "diversity'" -as a person who is Bi-racial, I'll tell you it's not what they make it out to be. i"m fed up with going into places where such a large emphasis is (supposedly) put on overcoming this type of behavior, only to find out it is much to the contrary.

I know that you cannot "Make" people interact with others outside thier own race or be more freindly, but is there anyway at all you might be able to rectify this situation?

I love your coffee house very much, and would hate to have to put it off forever.

IF nothing else, they need to be reminded about a lot of the things the Haight stood for in the 60's!

Thank You.

--------------------------------------------

My response:

Thank you so much for your message. My first, quick appeal is that if you haven’t left the area yet, we actually have a social night tonight, our monthly “Game Night” that starts in less than 1 hour (7 pm) – I am going to try to be there for it, although I have a childcare issue I am still trying to resolve tonight.

If you can’t make it, or just don’t want to, I understand. I have to say it saddens me to hear someone looking for a sense of community and not finding it at our coffeehouse, because that is the main reason my family opened the cafe a year ago. I agree that in our laptop age, it is a little off-putting sometimes to come and sit only to find a “group” of people who have decided to each have his or her own individual experience instead of interacting with others. It really depends on the particular set of people that comes in at any time. Personally, I think a coffeehouse should be a place where someone can come in and just read a book or study or use their computer – sometimes. But it should also be a place people come together to meet each other, talk, laugh, debate, create, and learn more about each other, and often in San Francisco these days we are a little too self-involved to do that.

When I was at the shop a little bit ago today, I noticed a couple of people playing chess, and another small group talking, but I was a little surprised how many computers where out and faces buried, which isn’t what I would prefer on a weekend. We have been contemplating changing our policy on weekend afternoons to shut down the wireless and put up signs announcing the time as “social hour” for the very reasons you have noted. We are a little worried about the blow-back, but if you visit the shop in a couple of months you might see that we have taken that step – your e-mail has served as a strong plea to push that idea to the forefront.

Beyond that, I do want you to know that at Coffee to the People we think constantly about how to be the best community coffeehouse we can be. To that end, we have set up several regular community social events:

• Every Tuesday night is an open mic where anyone in the community can come play or listen to live acoustic music
• The 1^st Saturday night of each month is Game Night from 7 - 10 pm, where we invite everyone to come play games and hang out. It is often loud and fun, although some months it is a little more happening than others.
• The 1^st & 3^rd Mondays of the month we have a knitting group open to the public
• Every other Sunday at 10 am we have a children’s story hour
• Most months we have at least one or two special events, often with musical guests

All of our events are free, and we have been looking for more of them, so long as we find someone who seems passionate and good about keeping the event running on a regular basis.

I love the Haight. I live here with my family over on Ashbury Street, and I started the coffeehouse with my sister, wife, parents, and in-laws because I felt that we didn’t really have a place in our neighborhood that served as a true gathering place for our community (and that had good coffee and cared about the environment). I feel like we failed you today, and I am sorry. I am a member of the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, and I see people there that definitely remind me of what this neighborhood stood for in the 1960s, and I can see a lot of those ideals live on today around here. Some of those people are regulars at our shop, and my dream is to make Coffee to the People into a place where you could come and feel at home with these people. We will keep working on it. In the meantime, I hope you don’t completely give up on San Francisco. In any big city there are many types of people, and I hope that one day you will wander back into our coffeehouse and find what you (and I) have been looking for all along.

Yours truly,

Bob Harkins

What do you think?  Should we implement a "social hour" (or social hours) on weekend afternoons, shutting down the wifi and encouraging people to actually talk with each other?   What other things can we do to bring out our neighborhood's sense of community?

We were extremely bummed when our previous open mic host was no longer able to emcee our open mic.  We tried to keep it up without a host, but that really didn't work out.  And so, sadly, we shelved the open mic until we could find a good host to kick it off again.

Then local singer-songwriter Grace Woods offered to host open mics on Tuesdays at our coffeehouse.  So we are elated to bring back the event, 7-9 pm every Tuesday night starting on August 22.  Come bring your songs, your instruments, your poetry, yourselves, and your friends and help make the new Open Mic at Coffee to the People the place to be on Tuesday nights.

Want to learn more about the open mic?  Grace made a Myspace page for it:

http://www.myspace.com/coffeetothepeopleopenmic

For those of you who may assume opening a coffeehouse means brewing a little coffee and raking in the dough, I have some news -- it is HARD WORK.  AND it is hard to break even, let alone make a profit.  We're at our one-year anniversary and still struggling financially.  Thankfully, we have been growing.  We actually sell a good amount of coffee, but being in San Francisco and insisting on certain basic human decencies like providing a health care program to our employees, we still haven't quite turned a corner.

SO, once again, any ideas out there would be appreciated.  How do we get enough additional customers in the door to increase our sales the 15% we need to stay afloat?

Currently, we run an ad on the front page of the Haight Ashbury Beat, which is about all the traditional advertising we can afford and believe is cost-effective.  If you check out the paper (http://www.haightashburybeat.com) you'll see our ad as a banner at the bottom of the front page.  Any suggestions for an ad that will draw people better?

We also have some events, we you can see on our announcements page.  We have game night the first Saturday night of every month. 

We used to have open mic every Friday, but our host up and left and the event died off.  If anyone knows of a good open mic host or group looking for a forum, let's hear it.

Other ideas?