Have you seen the “turned my apartment into a café” party trend on social? It’s positively precious, and I had to try it out on my unsuspecting children for a little bit of coerced summer magic. Turns out, I want to live in a café 24/7. Job hazard.
Except it’s actually pretty easy to do this one, and the coziness get cranked up to max. Pour a coffee or steep some tea and settle in; we’re coffee-shop owners now and we need energy and focus.
Decide on the scale. Are you inviting the entire neighborhood or transforming your space for you and your cat to have some quality time? The first thing to do is to get an idea of the scale of your pop-up shop.
How involved do you want this? Are you making all the pastry dough for your clementine-blossom-perfumed tarts with gingersnap crumble and passionfruit foam? Orrrrr are you looking for a “I baked the croissants from frozen so they’re basically homemade” moment? Both are totally valid and perfectly cozy.
Decide on the menu. Pick a couple coffee or tea drinks to offer (like an iced vanilla latte with vanilla cold foam, strawberry-rhubarb espresso tonic, or an iced strawberry milk matcha latte), as well as some café food standards you can’t miss. Think cookies, pastries, hand pies, tarts, muffins, bagels, or even individual jars of overnight oats or chia pudding, but don’t forget the savory side! I offered mini quiche and egg bites at my home café for my kiddos, to try and encourage a little protein with their sugar rush.
Design the logo and menu. Part of the fun, for me anyway, is really taking your home and making it something else, and that includes branding. Canva makes it super easy with a bunch of coffee shop or café logo templates, and you can take that logo and paste it across a café menu template for a cohesive theme that will impress your guests and your cat. This one and this one are presh. Alternately, you can write out your menu on butcher paper, and that’s whimsical in the best of ways.
Invitations. OK, never required but always delightfully extra. Invite your friends (or cat) to the grand opening of your home café with a flyer from Canva. I adore this one, this one, and this one.
Plan your coffee/tea. Do you have the right tools for your menu—a way to make espresso, milk frother, matcha whisk, etc.? Make sure you have what you need and feel comfy using them.
Make your cups (super optional). Want to go full-tilt? Print stickers with your café logo and paste them on paper coffee cups. Your friends will never recover from their impressedness.
Cozy up your space. Lean into lamps, gather enough comfy seating, and plan a vibey playlist that exudes the ambience you’re going for (A French café? Lofi café? Traditional coffee shop?).
Set up your spaces. Designate three areas: (1) a coffee area where the caffeination will happen, (2) a space for food, (3) a space for people. These three will mix and mingle, but you’ll want to have zones for each, so you can ensure each spot has what it needs. A bar cart can be perfect for a beverage zone, but all you need is just a flat surface!
If you’re hosting for kiddos like me, consider juices, milk, and different syrups to create “fancy” drinks. Mine loved making chocolate milk with the milk in acrylic cartons and the chocolate syrup in pretty bottles.
Prep or buy the food. Make sure you dramatically lean into your short-lived stint as a pastry chef for a café, put on good tunes, wear your favorite apron, and bake for fun, because you’re about to have a really good time. Or buy croissants from Costco 🤷♀️, which I can also do dramatically. Just watch me.
Dress your place in its café costume. Lay out butcher paper beneath the food zone, set out your food labels, hang up a simple LED “open” sign (This one lives permanently on my wall now.), get out your tiered servers. Your house is now in café mode. It’s almost time.
For food labeling, I used my Dymo label maker to press black labels that I stuck onto these reusable black signs. I also love seeing handwritten labels on butcher paper, around where each different food goes, which is beautifully simple.
Open your coffee shop doors and enjoy. The beauty of this party theme is that it’s less about being a Stress, Rushed Hostess® and more about leaning into the relaxation and simple pleasures of a café. Guests serve themselves, conversation is encouraged (And the music should be quiet enough that it even gets to be at a normal decibel.), and there are probably lots of pastries. If you’re not having lots of pastries, I honestly don’t need to be invited. Give my spot away to one of your like, keto CrossFit friends. Meanwhile, I’ll be picking up buttery flakes of croissant off my plate with my finger, sipping a matcha latte, and asking my friends what books they’re into lately.
Cheers, friends!
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