Hospitality Is Not a Vibe

Can’t be bought. Can’t be faked. But I did find it behind a Domino’s.

I’ve been on an absolute rip, trying out every coffee shop I can—and I’m here to report a trend.

But as a coffee roaster who’s always designing his future café in his head, don’t expect this to be a call-out. I know how much blood, sweat, and debt goes into any one of these places. So, no photos either. Just use your imagination. I’m pretty sure the references will land—even if this is a very niche scene report from my small corner of central New Jersey.

I’m just using this space to think out loud. Feel free to chime in. Challenge me. Just not on latte art. I can’t do that. Yet.

Here’s what I keep noticing: in so many of these new suburban shops, the aesthetics are immaculate—but the service is… awkward.

You see the $35,000 espresso machine and think, this is going to be great. The barista is WDT’ing single-dose beans from a mediocre roaster. The coffee? Not it.

Maybe there’s a good sandwich. But even then, the things they’ve optimized somehow miss the mark.

It’s like some strange mix of too much and not enough.

What they’re all missing—and it’s the hardest thing to get right in any business—is true hospitality.

Because hospitality can’t be faked. And it can’t be bought.

On one hand, I’m amazed to see these symbols of warmth and craft—wooden trays, lime-washed walls, a Slayer espresso machine—showing up in fully suburban places like central New Jersey, with the kind of details you would normally only see in the gentrifying edge neighborhoods of New York and L.A.

In theory, this should make me happy. But somehow, it’s more depressing than the shops that aren’t trying at all.

Because when a place looks like it should feel good—when it’s dressed in all the signifiers of welcome—but still leaves you cold, the dissonance is hard to shake.

The room is beautiful. Maybe even the espresso is technically dialed in—rare, but possible. But the soul isn’t there.

The space whispers you matter.
But the people inside don’t echo it.

And that’s the heartbreak:

The vibe says you belong.
The experience reaffirms, you are fully on your own.

Then There’s This Place…

There’s a new coffee shop in a small New Jersey town near me that looks like it time-traveled straight out of the ’90s. The coffee? Incredibly basic. It’s one of those corporate “Italian” brands that supplies the machine, the cups, the pre-ground beans in shiny foil retail bags. Synthetic syrups. The menu is minimal, and the offerings feel frozen in time.

And yet—it has a 5.0 star rating on Google. Over 500 reviews. That’s nearly impossible.

The shop is tucked behind a Domino’s Pizza. Inside, the furniture is mismatched and scattered, chairs at odd heights, tables that wobble, and a chalkboard menu that leans against the wall like it gave up trying to be mounted. The bar is purely utilitarian. No brass. No poured concrete. No obvious design choices at all.

It should be infuriating. But it’s not. It’s… kind of perfect.

And the reason it works is simple: the owner.

He’s an ex-corporate guy from Karachi, and he’s almost always behind the bar. He remembers names. He introduces customers to each other. He cracks jokes, follows up on stories, gently nudges people into conversation. He’s not performing hospitality—he’s living it. And people feel it. That’s the only thing that seems to matter.

There’s no vibe, and yet I loved my time there. With his encouragement, my introverted self got to chatting with a local dispensary owner, and we shared our bemusement at how much we liked being in this anachronistic anomaly.

I forgot to mention: the owner’s degree hangs behind the bar. In a weird way, the place is perfectly singular—an experience too specific and human to be recreated.

So what do we learn from this?

Hospitality isn’t a formula. It’s not about taste or budget—and sadly, not even about coffee.

It rests on the energy and presence of who is behind the counter. On the subtle social choreography of that magic person who just knows how to make a room feel good.

We’ve been trained to recognize signs of hospitality—hand-thrown ceramics, “intentional” playlists, warm tones on Instagram, as the thing itself. But those are proxies. Hospitality isn’t the frame—it’s what happens between people inside it.

But real hospitality isn’t any of those things.

You can’t pay someone to care. You can’t train it into them.

They can fake a smile, sure—but the generosity that flows from a soul that is truly generous… that might be one of the rarest things we get to feel on this earth.

Maybe the best thing a café can offer isn’t great coffee or beautiful design.
Maybe it’s just a reason to come back. A sense of being remembered. Of being seen.

We don’t need more coffee shops that feel like Apple stores.
We need ones that feel like someone left the door unlocked and the kettle on.
We need more that feel like a neighbor’s living room.
The kind of neighbor most of us never had—and still quietly wish we did.