Blue Bottle Coffee - Hiro-o Cafe — Restaurant in Tokyo

I was visiting from San Francisco Bay Area for our honeymoon and as a long patron of blue bottle, I ran into this location while grabbing bread across the street at truffle bakery. I made a horrible cultural mistake of taking a bite of truffle salt bread from truffle bakery while having coffee inside the store. Blue Bottle locations we visit daily in Bay Area (Palo Alto, CA and San Mateo, CA), we are welcomed to bring small bites that doesn’t smell, inconvenient to others and something that doesn’t require cleaning (like madeleine, simple bread stuff). Hindsight it makes sense that being in Japan, the cultural norm would outweigh/override the corporate rule. I genuinely apologize and want to make sure that when we were informed we cannot eat anything brought from outside, we immediately stopped, packed and put the bread in the bag. We did notice the manager come out to peak towards us a few times to make sure we weren’t eating and she seemed genuinely upset (We never seen anyone that upset and that ticked off in Japan before). After she peaked out to check on us for the second time (once again, bread was in the bag when she checked first time already), we felt unwelcomed and decided to leave and threw away unfinished coffees. She did a good job of making unspoken communication that we should leave.

As for the coffee, the unique balance of acidity (さんみ) that pierces through the creaminess of the milk, defining Blue Bottle coffee was missing today. In short, the espresso felt too light compared to taste of milk. (This is compared to US and also a few blue bottle locations in Japan including Hiro-o from February 2023). We visited this location in February 2023 so do have a direct reference as to what they could deliver in this location. Also, we tried oat milk cafe latte for the first time in Japan. Although the oat milk itself was better than the one in US (that is, just the milk itself), it seems they don’t have a strong direction of oat milk when combined with Hayes Valley espresso compared to US. Given oat milk is default milk in blue bottle US and the coffee market is much bigger in US, it probably makes sense that blue bottle’s US stores defined the direction better with oat milk based cafe latte. However, we were still genuinely excited to see the glimpse of the future where Japan will take oat milk latte to the next level in its...

店には問題は無い。ただ、時折客層が最悪。本来、この立地のブルーボトルコーヒーには来店しない層が来店してしまっている。

窓際の電源席でコーヒーを飲んでいると一人の女性客（20代後半の白いアウターを着用）が「あなたは唯一の電源席の近くに座っている。私がPCを充電したいから席を変わってくれ」と言われた。

渋々席を替わると、web会議を始めようとし始めた。

そこで、私が、「今からweb会議をするのか？さすがにうるさくなるのは困るが・・・。」と申し伝えるも、「すみません」と謝罪の上強行。

さすがに、残っていたコーヒーを飲み残りに廃棄し、スタッフの方に上記の事案について共有した後に退店した。

電源席にありつけなかったのであれば、諦めて他の店を探すべきだったろうし、まして、隣席に確実に迷惑になるweb会議を強行する様なユーザが居る中で、本当にブルーボトルコーヒーが提供したい価値提供が行えているかは疑問である。

スタッフの方々や品質には何ら問題無い。提供スピードも通常か、余力があるときはそれより早い。一部の「ノマドワーカー（笑）」もしくは「在宅勤務」の方々によって、通常の利用でカフェで一服したい方には、時折、非常に嫌な気持ちになる事故が発生するリスクがあるお店になってしまっている。

もちろん、コレはお店が判断することではあるが、通常利用するユーザとしては店舗には電源廃止やweb会議の禁止などをお願いしたいと思った。

ーーーーーーーーーーーーー (In English) There are no problems with the store. However, sometimes the customer base is the worst. People who would not normally visit Blue Bottle Coffee in this location are now visiting the store.

As I was drinking coffee at the seat next to the window, near by the power, a female customer (in her late 20s, wearing a white outerwear ,japanese) said, ``You're sitting near the only power seat.I want to charge my PC, so please change seats.'' Give the seat which you are sitting to me,” he said.

I reluctantly changed seats and started trying to start a web conference.

So, I said,

Are you going to have a web conference now? I don't want it to be noisy, but...'', but he apologized and pressed on, saying

If I couldn't find a power source at the seat, I probably should have given up and looked for another shop. Moreover, there are users who are forced to hold web conferences that will definitely annoy the people sitting next to them, so Blue Bottle Coffee is really... It is questionable whether the company is providing the value it wants to provide.

There are no problems with the staff or the quality. The delivery speed is normal, or faster if there is spare capacity. Some

nomadic workers'' (lol) or

Of course, this is up to the store to decide, but as a regular user, I would like to ask the store to remove the power supply and ban web...

I’m not a fan of coffee chains, but Bluebottle does an excellent job. The location is awesome if you happen to be in Hiroo and arrive by train. If you find the right exit, it’s a one minute walk. The coconut cake was not bad, but a little bit dry … the coffee was reliably good, but not incredibly mind blowing … I had a single origin latte. One downside is that the toilets are located in a neighboring restaurant … it’s moderately inconvenient … but the cafe is well designed and...