Why I Built Café Meria

The room fills up with people who came for a great drink and stayed for each other. That's the whole idea, and everything else serves it.

The whole café is an art project

I came up through marketing, video, photography and web design, years of building other people's brands. Café Meria is where all of it goes into something of my own. The menu, the drinks, the color, the music, the light, the room itself: every piece is something I get to make, and keep remaking. It's a creative outlet with its door open to the public every single day.

And I love the room. I'd rather pull a hundred drinks and talk to a hundred people than spend an afternoon alone at a screen. The back-and-forth across the counter is the best part of the job.

Fun, music, vibrant, nourishing. The kind of place where you meet a neighbor you've never talked to.

Nourishing, all the way down

We care about what goes into every cup and every bowl, and we make as much as we can ourselves.

• Syrups made in house from real vanilla beans, real coconut, organic bergamot-rose tea and pure maple, sweetened with organic cane sugar.
• Ceremonial-grade matcha.
• Whole-fruit smoothies: the fruit and nothing added. Sweeten with raw honey if you like.
• Açaí bowls of organic açaí blended with real fruit and berries, finished with granola we make ourselves.
• Alternative milks at no extra charge, because choosing what you drink shouldn't cost more.

Our coffee comes from specialty roasters, and we change beans by taste.

Bring Café Meria to your space

I see a café as a complementary business to almost every business. We want to open Café Meria in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I'm flexible on what it looks like, from a single table to a full kitchen. If you have the space, tell me about it.