Fundraiser for Jim and Patty's Coffee

Dear Jim and Patty’s friends,

This is a tough one. We love you, our community, and we have loved serving up good coffee with hardly any backtalk for the last 20+ years at Jim and Patty’s, and before that at Coffee People.

But it has become clear that we are at a crossroads. The amount of debt we’ve accumulated since Covid, ever-rising costs of doing business, and the fact that Patty was mostly focused on the 24 hour care of Jim for the last couple of years rather than the business, means that we’re in trouble. Our two stores are running well, and we have the sweetest, hardest working team in town. We lost our beloved Jim, but his vision still guides us, and Patty is back in the stores. Every day our tables are full and the vibes are good. But if we can’t trim overhead and debt soon, we will be forced to close our doors.

Our family is determined not to let this happen without a fight.

Here’s our plan:

We raised prices on our breakfast sandwiches. Sorry!! They are epically good sandwiches, made by hand with love - and our house-made buttermilk biscuits. (FYI, the youngest and smart-alecky-est of the family, Patrick, makes those biscuits in our bakery.) Our breakfast menu is labor intensive, so we are considering simplifying it.

We are going to start offering discounts to public servants who support our community: nurses, teachers, police officers, paramedics, Tri-Met drivers, fire fighters… We love our city, and we want to spread some joy! And if these discounts increase sales, down goes our labor percentage, one of our biggest nuts to crack.

We’re shortening our hours to 6-1 Mon-Fri, and 7-1 Sat/Sun. This feels drastic, but the vast majority of our sales occurs during these hours. After 1 pm, we start losing money.

As you may know, we recently brought our bakery back in-house. We had thought outsourcing our pastries to be made by a professional bakery would be a good idea. We were wrong! Our pastries, Pig Newtons, and biscuits are all now made behind the scenes at Fremont again. We are super proud of everything we bake.

The goal of 250k would not clear our debt, but it would slow down the cash drain and give us a chance to make operational changes that we hope will keep us in the game.

We’re embarrassed to ask, but we don’t want to say goodbye. We want to keep on being your gathering place in this dear city. We want to keep the Black Tiger shakes coming! We can’t tell you how grateful we are for all of you, whether or not you’re able to chip in. Everyone is feeling the strain these days. And if this doesn’t work and we have to close in the end, so be it. Every business has a life, and we’re grateful for the wonderful life we’ve had in Portland and Beaverton for so many years.  Jim used to say that even though we haven’t become rich, we haven’t missed a meal either! 

Oh, and by the way, this is only about the Fremont and Beaverton locations. The Forest Heights store is owned and operated by a separate entity.

Love, Patty, Myra, Saul, and Patrick and all the Human Beings