1. Why can’t I find your menu online?
2. Do you have WiFi, and do you kick people out if they’ve been sitting at a table using your WiFi and making a show of drinking cold coffee for, say, a couple of hours, and all their food is long gone?
3. When exactly did you open? Because I must tell you, I only heard about your establishment a few days ago, and I am the kind of person who periodically Googles “Korean restaurants within 5 miles” (it’s a hobby). I only found out you were Korean at all because someone said, “The owners are very polite, and I think they’re Korean because I overheard them talking in Korean to each other?”
4. Maybe you’re trying to play up this mysterious vibe you have going on, but have you thought about advertising a bit more, or maybe having a website, or leaving those little flyers with the holes in them on people’s doorknobs? I am a simple gal; my go-to Chinese restaurant is still the one that left a flyer on our door three years ago.
5. Speaking of which, do people sometimes ask you to recommend a Chinese restaurant because “YOU’LL know a good one!” even though you’re not Chinese, and then when you finally make a suggestion, they tell you they hate that place and they’re just going to go to P.F. Chang’s? Does that make you want to slap them, or at least stop talking to them forever?
6. How would you rate your plain regular old coffee, on a scale of one to ten? I really enjoy a latte, but I’m lactose-intolerant, and also pretty cheap.
7. Just what ARE your prices? Are they secret?? WHERE’S YOUR MENU AND WHY CAN’T I FIND IT ONLINE?
8. How long did you spend weighing the respective merits of opening a cafe versus a coffee shop versus a dry cleaners? Was it really that hard to choose? Did you consider drawing straws, or writing down “dry cleaners” and “cafe” and “coffee shop” on three little slips of paper and choosing one out of a hat, or maybe just arm-wrestling for the right to decide?
9. Do you offer same-day dry-cleaning service?
10. If you do offer same-day dry-cleaning service, how much do you charge? We already have a regular dry cleaners and they’re fine, I guess — but given that they do not serve coffee or even one single Korean dish, how much do they really care about keeping my business?
11. Have you ever thought about adding a FOURTH service? If I may make a suggestion, on-site child care is always a winner. Really. I would — that is, the people, they would LOVE it. I mean, I’m sure your business model is working fine as is, I just think that would really knock it out of the park.
12. Why in the world would you close at 3pm every day? Saturdays too?? I love to meet friends for coffee — or Korean food — but I have a job and two small children and I cannot meet anyone before 7pm on a weekday. Seriously, I have almost no time to myself, it is not uncommon for those kids to try and talk to me when I’m in the bathroom, and fully 100% of my socializing takes place in the evening. I get that you’re primarily trying to cater to the lunchtime crowd and I know you cannot schedule your business hours around my life, but I cannot be the only one who lives like this, right? RIGHT? I’M NOT SHOUTING, THIS IS JUST HOW I TALK NOW
13. How quiet is your cafe? I really, really like quiet.
14. If I ever tried to practice my (admittedly terrible) Korean conversational skills with you, would you judge me, or find it cute and endearing?
15. My seven-year-old wants me to ask if you have any TVs in your establishment, and if so, how often you put on Big Hero 6 for the people to enjoy.
16. Hey, um, how far are the dry-cleaning chemicals from the place where you cook your food? Pretty far, right?
17. If I brought my sister — the real Korean chef in the family — to your cafe, would she like the food? I need you to be brutally honest. I love my sister when she’s angry, but you might not.
Tags: cafes, coffee, food, important questions, life in my weird town, mysteries i haven’t solved yet, restaurants, small businesses are the something of america
combination locations of uncommon things! a friend in college told me about a combination tattoo parlour/taxidermy shop, which is by far still my favorite combination store idea. I’ve also been to a combination icecream shop/laundromat.
part of me is like “food prep and dry-cleaning chemicals, these things should not mix” but the other part is like “hey that’s pretty convenient!”
I used to frequent a combination auto body shop / cuban cafe. I can’t speak to the quality of the auto repairs, but I can tell you that they made quite excellent cafe con leche.
There is a Cuban cafe/beauty salon/bar/pool hall about a mile down the road from where I am now, but sadly I have never gone in to investigate.
Where I used to live there was a combination cigar shop/coffee bar. They made really good, authentic cappuccinos.
There was a combination autospa/cafe in the town I used to live in. You could also watch your car go through the automated car wash portion of the cleaning process through giant windows on the wall of the cafe portion.
Best combo business I have ever seen was the barber shop/charter airline service several towns over from where I grew up.
I feel like MJN Air should embark upon this
There used to be a place in my hometown that sold tombstones and wholesale Snapple by the case.
My high school friends and I bought a case there, just to check the place out. It was (perhaps not surprisingly) creepy. They basically just slapped your case of Snapple down on a big slab of granite, and there were a bunch of half-finished gravestones lying around.
this is amazing
omg, that is probably too wonderful a strangeness for my strange high school self. my highschool self would have thought snapple/tombstone land was the best thing in the world.
My weirdo friends and I thought it was pretty amazing. We didn’t have a car, though, so we ended up lugging this giant case of Snapple all over town and trying to drink as many as we could on the way home. I think I probably had a thousand grams of sugar that day.
I used to drive by a “tattoo and stained glass” parlor in Auburn, NY, which I guess makes some sense as a combination of artistic skills.
A college friend told me she grew up in a town so small that the only laundromat was also the only bar.
considering that my favorite laundromat ever was directly across the street from a bar in which we’d drink beers while our clothes swished & tumbled, i view this as a most sensible combo.
I stayed in a Welsh village once that was so small its community hub was the bus shelter. (There was no village shop or church; there had been a pub, but it had closed down when the landlord died. All that was left was the bus shelter. People from the village would send postcards there when they went on holiday and they’d be pinned up inside for all to read.)
I used to rent dvds from a video store/tanning salon.
Yes! There was a place like this near my high school!
my gym is also a tanning salon and rents videos. Small towns, man.
In Baltimore, there’s a combination shoe boutique and chocolate shop.
that actually makes a lot of sense; fancy shoes + fancy chocolate!
It is very cute and very, very crowded/tight. Also, this reminds me, I have a gift certificate for the place that I need to spend.
I know of a place that sells Bibles and Wigs.
I think that place could do pretty well here where I live.
Big Hair No Sin.
My laundromat also has a coffee shop in it, but the coffee shop never seems to be open!
I went to a haberdashery-by-day/pub-by-night in Ireland once. It was amazing.
There was (maybe still is?) a combination antiques store and tanning salon in DC. And in Brooklyn there’s a bar/flower shop I really want to visit.
Where I live there is a combination tattoo parlour/laser tattoo removal place. I guess if the tattoo artist messes up, you can get it fixed right away…
There used to be a travel agency/cafe in a nearby town. They were open for over a decade and only closed recently, IDK if business dried up due to the internet or they retired or what. I always thought it would be weird to eat there, like … sorry, I don’t want to go to Disney World, I just want a sandwich?
Pet shop with tanning salon! (Pet shop used to be a video rental place with tanning booths). The store also had the most impressive candy collection, other than the gas stations, in my tiny hometown. We would purchase fun dips and eat them while watching the turtles or guinea pigs. Those animals were probably all diabetics from the amount of sugar that dusted their cages.
PDX has a motorcycle gear shop/cafe. I’ve heard of a place on the Oregon coast with tanning, scrapbooking supplies, coffee, and ice cream, called Scrappuccino, but I cannot confirm its existence.
why would you take excellent things like coffee and ice cream and ruin them by adding scrapbooking
I’m assuming exclusively for the reason that you can call it Scrappuccino.
legit.
there’s a combination barber shop / computer repair shop a couple of miles from my house.
Adelaideans (South Australia) worth their salt would know/remember “Peter Van the Bread and Party Man’.
i LOVE combo spots! My fav is a place in my hometown that’s a bakery / cafe/ flower shop. Tangentially related, my dad also had a thing for ONLY ordering all coffee (JUST PLAIN like the Lord intended!) from local independent donut shops, and rejected the whole PREMISE of a Starbucks.
Also, as most of the best asian food in any neighborhood is found in strip malls, theres a good chance their food is awesome.
My co-worker used to insist that the donair shop near the office was Russian, although they had a Kurdistan flag in the window and I saw Kurdish newspapers in there.
For some reason combination vacuum cleaner repair and locksmith is pretty common.
I see lots of combination locksmith/cobblers.
There is a hair salon/coffee shop/children’s playplace combo around the corner from me!
That is genius.
why aren’t there more children’s playplaces inside licensed cafes. or bars at playgrounds.
THANK YOU
Obligatory![]()
Your USERNAME omg <3 <3 <3 <3
Okay, so I really want to be Sally Ride’s 100 Tampons for Halloween (I was going to make a cape of them ala John Snow) buuuuut the only place we go on Halloween is to a house party of roughly fifty adults and seventy-five children. It would not be appropriate buuuuut I still might.
I probably won’t.
I might!
omg pictures please if you do
A plain-ish cape over the costume. Hiding the 100 tampons from children. Open cape to show adults, then swiftly close it again.
You are awesome.
I was just telling my boyfriend about this! (The best part was his loooooooong pause, before he finally said “…. wait, that’s a lot!”)
If they wanted to add a fifth service, might I suggest an animal shelter? Cat cafes are very popular these days.
And if they wanted to add a sixth service, possibly due to an addiction to regulatory agencies, might I suggest a federal savings bank?
I think the combination of a cat cafe and dry cleaner is the perfect business.
Credit union would be a better cultural fit, I think.
There’s a dry cleaner/notary/coffee and banh mi shop near my office. The sandwiches are rather good.
Just reading all of these and thinking, “Manhattan is so boring.”
In Edinburgh, there are (or used to be, when I was living there) a couple of combined laundromat/ restaurants. I always thought that was a brilliant idea, and wondered why there weren’t more places like that in the US.
They also had great names (“The Lost Sock” and “My Beautiful Launderette”).
THE LOST SOCK I want it to be my new hangout
In Reykjavik too! And apparently they have multiple international locations, and they really enjoy breastfeeding.
i am imagining they are breastfeeding their patrons. shhh, don’t spoil it
I did laundry there once! And probably ate some sort of cake.
My Beautiful Launderette is also a 1985 movie where Daniel Day-Lewis opens a launderette with his lover, something I think would very much appeal to the aesthetics of all Toast-lovers.
Harvey Washbangers is where the young people go, I’m told, to flirt, do laundry, and have a meal simultaneously. Definitely a college town business.
Harvey Washbangers is an excellent name. I still miss the iteration of a local dive bar that called itself the Wash & Slosh when it ran an attached laundromat. The dive bar persists, but the washing machines are gone.
In Glasgow there’s a new fancy post office which has a cafe in it. Which is so counterintuitive — the post office is the *worst place ever* normally — but this one is so nice and there are people relaxing with their coffees and the selection of cards is amazing.
I really want to read more about zany combination businesses but IT DOES NOT COUNT if one business is just RENTING SPACE FROM THE OTHER, guys
There used to be an Italian restaurant two doors down from my office (run by the same guy who owned the Moroccan restaurant next door to my office), and a taco stand opened up inside of it for two months as an experiment, before the owner went to open a taco shop somewhere else.
Now the Italian restaurant has closed, and the taco place has returned.
I’m in the coffee shop
I’m in the dry cleaners
I’m in the combination coffee shop/dry cleaners
Great, now I have Combination Pizza Hut Taco Bell stuck in my head.
We had a place that was a piano tuner that sold exotic birds, but I don’t think he tunes pianos anymore. It may also have been a Polish deli at some point.
Does America have KenTacoHuts?
Yes, we do, but I’d never heard them called that before! I usually see them while on road trips.
yes, we do, and it is my goal to actually eat at one some day. SOME DAY!!!!
The only Uruguayan place my dad could go to to get a chivito when we lived in DC is in a gas station. Apparently it’s great (I’m not a chivito fan, so I’ve never been), but it does mean that my father has taken people on business lunches to a gas station on U Street.
In Miami we just went to this awesome Tapas restaurant that is also a bakery and a gas station! It was like, super fancy inside too, but also had a pretty typical gas station counter at the front.
Fancy sandwich shops in gas stations are a THING in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic. I have always thought they would take off like wildfire in CA (where I live now), considering our crazy car culture.
Wait… is there a difference between a cafe and a coffee shop?
About $3.
Zing!
I am not in charge of these definitions, but I think a cafe will have food and maybe NOT the full range of iced and hot beverages, whereas a coffee shop will always offer many beverages but not necessarily much food. I don’t know, though. I’ve heard this place referred to as all three so that’s what I went with!
there is if you’re in Amsterdam
In Atlanta there was a combination laundry/beer pub. The Rub-a-Dub Pub. Musical groups on the weekends.
seriously what is it with food and laundry
Laundry is boring. Must have secondary draw.
Rio Rico, Arizona, is home to Joe’s Place Mexican Food and Auto Detailing. Tragically never open when I’ve been there, forcing me to instead go up the road to La Michoacana Helados for a tamarind/chamoy smoothie (a delicious consolation).
Really, any store can be a combination laundromat if they just buy a washing machine. I’m surprised more places haven’t tried that.
I went to a bar like this is St. Petersburg.
See I was just thinking that most places could easily be a combination notary by just having an employee become a notary. Easy peasy and you could bring in an extra $10 here or there.
Near where I live there is a convenience store that had a tiny but AMAZING red sauce Italian restaurant tucked into the back, behind a curtain. Best eggplant parm in the world. Then everyone discovered it and it expanded and the food became just OK. Sad.
Combo pub-hardware shop-postoffice was a thing in small towns in Ireland, and there are still a good few left. There’s even a hipster version opened in Dublin city centre, Mary’s Bar. You can buy a lightbulb and pint at the same time. I say hipster because I think it used to be a nightclub a year ago so its been made look old.
Or the classic grocer/undertaker. I remember one of those on the Carlow/Kilkenny border that also had a taxi service. I don’t *know* that they used the hearse as a taxi, but I like to imagine they did.
There seem to be a ton of combined post offices/ something-elses in the UK and Ireland, I imagine since that’s where a lot of people do their banking, pay utility bills, etc.
every place of business should ALSO be a pub, let’s be real.
My favorite combo is still the Laundromat/bar I saw in New Orleans. Laundry day would’ve been so much more pleasant if I could do it slightly sloshed.
Um. You mean you don’t bring a flask with you for the laundromat? I can’t be the only one.
And you could use the washers as a sobriety test! Anybody who fell over while watching them would immediately have their keys confiscated.
This is a little tangentally related because I don’t think these two things are mutually exclusive, but lately I’ve been dreaming of a place that is basically a sports-oriented ice cream shop. You can go and watch sports over an ice cream cone or a root beer float. It would be great for anyone who doesn’t drink alcohol but wants to watch sports.
Aww hell, it should probably just be an ice cream shop/pub, and serve drinks too. Ice cream pub.
Would be a fan. Note to self, buy root beer float ingredients before the U.S. game tomorrow night. That sounds SO GOOD.
“Ice cream pub”
WANT. NOW. YES. BUILD PLEASE.
Guinness milkshake. That is all.
I want to open the exact opposite, which is a bar for people who hate both sports and modern music. Maybe we’ll have PBS mysteries on a TV, or a string quartet.
I live across the street from a (cheap) wine bar that often hosts a string quartet in the evening.
ohhhh this sounds so perfect after an afternoon at a bowling alley with 12 Daisy Scouts
There’s a bar here that shows black and white movies on a loop and usually has a jazz band playing (really, really loudly).
Honestly, I just want a bar where the music isn’t blasting so loud you have to yell at people in order to be heard.
Or no TVs at all! Why do all bars have TVs now? Get off my lawn!
Combo Businesses: when I started at Smith about a dozen years ago, there was a local chain in Western MA called Dave’s Soda and Pet Food City (known for their ‘Dave’s Simply the Best’ own line of pet nosh). They advertised all the time on local TV, and I always meant to go to the Hadley store off the highway just for the experience.
They’re still there, though around 2006 or so they renamed to ‘Dave’s Soda and Pet City’.
I lived in a town where the Purolator office was in a pet food store.
My niece’s nanny regularly took her daughter and my niece to a cafe/children’s playplace/occasional purveyor of music lessons for preschoolers!
I stayed at a combination drive-in/motel (http://bestwesterncolorado.com/hotels/best-western-movie-manor) in southern Colorado. The rooms all faced the screen and had speakers you could turn on to hear the movie.
The same town had a combination antique/vintage/thrift shop and cafe where all the serving ware in the cafe was vintage and mismatched. It was awesome. It no longer seems to exist 🙁 but I think if I hit the lottery, this is what I should do. Goodwill/Good Eats!
My favorite combo business was the sketchy sex store in my hometown that also sold firewood.
Oh, you just reminded me– there’s a place in Pennsylvania that advertises “adult videos, fireworks, and karate supplies”. Talk about your one-stop shopping!
(I used to drive by there every weekend, but sadly never stopped in).
I’m pretty sure there are at least 50 of those places in Pennsylvania.
Welcome to Cords and Cords…We Keep You Warm At Night!
We have a combination furniture/musical instrument store here, so if you need a couch you just look around the showroom, but if you need an ukulele they lead you to this small corner with all the instruments. Weirdly, they are the best place to buy an ukulele here. (But the furniture’s kinda pricy.)
Lol, #16 was on my mind the whole time I was reading this. Wouldn’t it be funny if they delivered clean clothes, food, and coffee out the same door? I think so.
Ottawa Canada has a guy who advertises ‘rare stamps for collectors and refrigerator repair.’
We have an optometrist/fro-yo place. They sell v. fancy (designer!) eyeglass frames.
If you get your eyes checked, your fro-yo is free.
WHAT
I’m furious with my optometrist now
I have seen an optometrist/art gallery. Which honestly makes a lot of sense — test your eyes with this nice art, and the walls with glasses complemented the walls with art and the statues. Very classy.
We have a place here in upstate NY that sells African art and gelato.
I’m not really sure what the connection is, except maybe Italy’s failed attempt to colonize Ethiopia…?
We have an optometrist/fro-yo place. They sell v. fancy (designer!) eyeglass frames.
I know someone who used to take first dates to the car wash/taqueria — because you would instantly know if they were worth continuing on with if they said, “Car wash taqueria?” or “Car wash taqueria!”
Valid.
There is a combination coffee shop and antique store around the corner from me!
Not really a combo shop, but there is a furniture place in my town whose tagline is, “Where you always get a free onion!” I bought furniture there, and I indeed received a free onion of middling quality.
That’s… that’s positively Pratchett. That shop got here from Discworld, I tell you.
There’s a weird used furniture place in Cleveland where they give every shopper a free loaf of bread. They also have the most bizarre and hilarious local TV ads (like this one with some “lamp ladies”):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztzPlgm_S4w
In Franklin County, New York, there is a place called Dick’s Country Store Gun City and Music Oasis. They sell guns, groceries, gas, and guitars.
In San Francisco we have Chinese food & donuts – maybe it doesn’t quite qualify since they’re both food, but it stills seems strange to me.
A soul/Caribbean food joint downtown just closed, and is being replaced with “Miso Sweet,” a ramen and donut shop. I don’t even know.
We used to have a gun store with drive through coffee and it was gloriously Merikan. Also, a quick lube place with drive though coffee.
And in Wyoming, there are always combination stores because it’s usually the only store. Mainly drive though liquor with bar on one side and convenience store/gas station on the other.
I don’t expect you to come all this way just to see it, but there’s a lovely petrol-station/hair-dresser/art gallery out in far western New South Wales. It doesn’t do coffee, nor, I think, Korean food. Just petrol and art. And a short-back-and-sides.
Crosstown Laundry in Bloomington, Indiana, is a laundromat/Korean cafe with a walk-up window selling gimbap. I miss this place DESPERATELY.
Ithaca Pools – swimming pools and billiards tables. I wonder which one they started with! We also have a coffee shop and tattoo parlor combo, but they have separate names (but the same co-owner? so confusing).
Adelaideans (South Australia) worth their salt would know/remember ‘Peter Van the Bread and Party Man’.
in the town where I went to college, there was what we affectionately referred to as the “slash laundromat,” a liquor store/laundromat combination.