Mom 'n 'Em

When people leave, what do you hope they’re saying?

Of course we'd always love people walking around boasting about Mom 'n 'em, but truth be told, we want them to leave feeling like they were at home. Mom 'n 'em is a place where we take our craft seriously, trying to make some of the most delicious coffee around, but we're also trying to let people come as they are, feel relaxed, feel like they're somewhere familiar. We want them walking out already looking forward to the next visit. Become a regular, become a friend, become a familiar face. That's always been the goal, and I think we get there through our genuine selves, our amazing staff, our talented baristas, cooks, and beyond.

What’s something guests might not notice but you care deeply about?

Great question. For us, so many things come to mind...
Training, and how much work we put into ourselves and each employee to make sure they can execute to the best of their ability, especially when behind onf of our La Marzocco Strada's.
How we treat each other behind the bar, especailly when it is slammed and all eyes are on us making drinks and food. It is important to remain calm and composed during these highs tress times.
Where the coffee comes from and whether the people who grew it got paid right. The fact that we roast it ourselves a few miles away and taste it constantly so it's actually good, not just fine. We pride ourselves on constantly growing, evolving, and striving to be better than the previous day.
I would say another major one for us is cleanliness. A clean workplace and a clean station means a clean mind, and a clean work flow. The cleaner we can be, the better we can execute at perfecting your beverage.

Where are you choosing to do less these days?

Our Mother (yes, the Mom of Mom 'n 'em) lives by the motto "Keep it Simple". It is actually one of our 5 core company values.. "Keep it Simple".
For us, we are learning how to trim the fat around us, and get rid of things that take up too much of our attention and time for a low return. We are finding that time is only speeding up in life, and therefore we want to focus on the core of our work, and remove the unwanted material. One of those things for us has been our wine club. As silly as it may sound, I cancelled our entire wine club because, sadly, wine is not a core for us, coffee is. Our coffee club has outgrown our wine club by miles, so we wanted to shed more light on our coffee. We removed the wine club, not because we didn't like it, but to simplify and focus on why we opened in the first place: to serve delicious coffee!

What should someone order on their first visit?

We always recommend a Dirty 'Nati Egg Samich to newcomers, and for a beverage, well, I'm a huge fan of a simple Gibraltar (otherwise known as a Cortado). Our Dirty 'Nati Egg Samich is our most popular menu item: a sunny side fried egg on a fluffy english muffin with bacon, cheese, garlic aioli, and arugula. It's amazing, and the best part is that it's simple. Something we've had on the menu since day one, Mother's Day of 2019. The Gibraltar, for me, has a long history. I was served my first one as a kid at Trouble Coffee in San Francisco, where I lived for ten years, and Trouble was one of the first places I really fell in love with coffee. My brother Tony (also co-owner of Mom 'n 'em) would take me there every morning when I visited him in SF before moving.I later found out the name was 'created' by the founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, who I've always admired. A Gibraltar is always my drink of choice, and I think suggesting it is fun because it leads to a little story some guests didn't know they were walking into. It makes their visit that much more special, hearing a bit of honest history.