Is your baby wailing all night? Take them to a crying cafe. Plus, a beloved North Carolina coffee shop rebuilt after Hurricane Helene in 2024—last week, it burned down in a suspected arson. And a startup put an AI agent in charge of a cafe. It did not go well.
‘Coffee House That Rallied Town After Flood Is Intentionally Burned, NC Police Say’ – via The Charlotte Observer
In September 2024, floodwaters from Hurricane Helene filled the Woodfin location of High Five Coffee in North Carolina. With community support, the company reopened the shop nine months later. But earlier this month, the building was destroyed again, and investigators suspect arson.
The coffee shop, located on the banks of the French Broad River, burned down on May 7. The Woodfin Police Department said they identified a suspect using surveillance video and arrested them near the scene.
“The suspect did have a relationship with one of the employees at the business, and so through the protective order, he was prohibited from being on that property,” Police Chief Jacqui Boykin told local ABC affiliate WLOS.
In a statement on Instagram, High Five directed those who want to help to a GoFundMe that will “go directly toward supporting our staff who have lost their workplace and helping with the costs of rebuilding.”
Read more on the coffee shop fire here and support the rebuild here.
‘The Barista Is Human but an AI Agent Runs This Experimental Swedish Cafe’ – via the Associated Press
Many coffee companies are now using generative AI chatbots for tasks like customer service and inventory management. One startup took it a step further and put an AI agent in charge of an entire coffee shop—with predictably mixed results.
San Francisco-based Andon Labs opened a cafe in Stockholm, Sweden, powered almost entirely by a Google Gemini-powered AI agent nicknamed “Mona.” Agents are generative AI programs that are capable of autonomously performing tasks. As James Brooks reports for the AP, Andon Labs funded the project with a budget of about $21,000 and gave the agent full control over the opening process. This included applying for permits, finding internet and electricity providers, and hiring staff.
There have been some… hiccups. According to an update from Andon, Mona invited potential hires to in-person interviews, which, of course, the chatbot couldn’t do. Mona also impersonated an Andon Labs employee to get an alcohol license. When told to stop, the chatbot did it again.
Mona also ordered 3,000 rubber gloves for its two employees, as well as canned tomatoes, which the cafe doesn’t use in any of its dishes. The chatbot messaged workers outside of working hours, which Brooks notes “is a workplace no-no in Sweden.”
Andon Labs bills itself as an “AI safety and research startup” that “stress-tests” AI agents in the real world. “AI will be a big part of society in the future, and therefore we want to make this experiment (to) see what ethical questions arise when we have AI that employs other people and runs a business,” said Andon Labs’ Hanna Petersson.
The company has run several of these real-world AI tests. It previously worked with Anthropic to deploy Claude AI to run a vending machine in the offices of the Wall Street Journal. WSJ journalist Joanna Stern described the result as “chaos.”
The AI chatbot gave away nearly all its inventory for free within a few days. “It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear. Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared,” Stern wrote.
After being open for two weeks, the Swedish cafe had brought in about $5,700 in sales, but spent more than $16,000 of its original $21,000 budget on startup costs.
Giving free rein to a chatbot raises ethical concerns, according to Emrah Karakaya, a professor at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Karakaya compared the experiment to “opening Pandora’s box,” and offered a hypothetical: who is to blame if a customer gets food poisoning?
Karayaka also pointed out that without human oversight, the little mistakes the AI agent makes can add up. “If you don’t have the required organizational infrastructure around it, and if you overlook these mistakes, it can cause harm to people, to society, to the environment, to business,” Karakaya said. “The question is, do we care about this negative impact?”
Read the full story on the AI coffee shop manager here.
‘Japan’s Late-Night “Crying Cafes” Offer Refuge for Exhausted Mothers’ – via Kyodo News
Coffee shops provide coffee—obviously—but they’re often much more. Many are also third spaces, community hubs separate from home or work. Some host exhibitions and collaborate with local artists. Others run fundraisers, become donation and organizing hubs, or offer youth apprenticeship programs. In Japan, some are also becoming havens for new parents struggling to soothe their babies.
As Maki Shinozaki reports for Kyodo News, “crying cafes” are a new trend where cafes cater to new parents, particularly at night. They provide spaces for babies to crawl and to sleep, as well as designated breastfeeding and diaper-changing spaces. Importantly, they also provide support and reassurance for overwhelmed parents.
According to Shinozaki, the concept of crying cafes was first conceived by a manga artist and new mother known as Kenemoto. After first sharing the idea on social media in 2017, Kanemoto published a manga series online in 2023 featuring a “Yonakigoya,” or “Night Crying House,” which appears only at night as a haven for overwhelmed mothers. The idea resonated, and places offering such refuge began popping up.
Madoka Nozawa is the owner of a cafe in Memuro in northern Japan, and struggled with sleepless nights and feelings of isolation when her daughter was young. Since October 2025, she has opened the cafe to parents and babies from 9 p.m. on Sundays to 6 a.m. on Mondays. “I want this to be a place of refuge where people can feel like they’re not alone in their struggles,” she told Kyodo News.
In Tokushima Prefecture, a childcare support group runs similar initiatives twice a month. At these, the staff look after the babies, giving mothers a chance to rest. However, such efforts are mostly volunteer-run and rely on donations to help them stay open late or overnight. To continue, crying cafes will require government support.
“The public and private sectors need to work together to create places like nighttime crying cafes where people can seek help whenever they are in need of it,” said Kaori Ichikawa, a professor at Tokyo University of Information Sciences.
Read more on the crying cafes here.
More News
‘Le Quang Cuong (Nicky) Of Vietnam Is The 2026 World Cup Tasters Champion’ – via Sprudge
‘For Five Coffee Roasters Lands New Investment, Plans U.S. Expansion’ – via Daily Coffee News
‘Dunkin’ Brand Returns to Canada’ – via Global Coffee Report
‘Why Coffee Tastes Bitter, According to Molecular Biology ’ – via Popular Science
‘Coffee May Affect Your Sense Of Touch’ – via Sprudge
The Week in Coffee Unionizing
When they first unionized in 2024, workers at a Philz Coffee location in Berkeley, California, did so independently. Two years later, they have decided to affiliate themselves with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, the largest private-sector union in Northern California.
In 2024, all 16 workers at the Philz cafe voted to unionize. The employees were moved to organize after an incident in 2023 when management sent half the staff home for wearing pro-Palestinian pins.
It has now been two years since their vote, and a lot has changed at Philz. In August 2025, founders Phil and Jacob Jaber sold the company to a private equity firm for $145 million. Last month, CEO Mahesh Sadarangani ordered all the brand’s 70-odd locations to remove Pride flags and other decorations. The move resulted in a huge backlash from customers, workers, and LGBTQ+ groups. Sadarangani quickly reversed his stance.
The union’s social media accounts had been dormant since the vote, and it’s unclear what progress they had made in bargaining for a contract over the past two years. However, the union told NPR member station KALW that the response from their community after the flag incident inspired them to continue organizing.
Affiliating with UFCW Local 5 gives workers the “strength, resources, and solidarity” needed to “make sure workers have a permanent voice in the future of Philz,” the union said in an email. On Instagram, the union said it was preparing to bargain with the company over a first contract. UFCW Local 5 also represents unionized workers at Verve Coffee, Cat & Cloud, Highwire Coffee, and Peerless Coffee.
Beyond the Headlines
‘How India’s Smaller Cities Are Rewriting the Rules of Specialty Coffee Expansion’ by Sohel Sarkar
