File Systems of Coffee

Rollins came to coffee out of decades in design and tech, which explains the one detail he refused to tidy up: the La Marzocco arrived wrapped in shipping tape, and the tape is still on it. A room this deliberate about what it puts on display keeps exactly one thing back: the name of whoever roasts what is in the cup.

A multi-roaster program rather than a house roast, sourced from London, Northern Europe and across America, with everyday coffees on the board alongside Gesha lots, yet not one roaster is named anywhere, and the shop's own about page still claims it does the 'sourcing, roasting, and brewing' itself. There are no retail bags; the one packaged thing the shop sells is a ceremonial matcha set.

The room is dim and retrofuturistic, built on early-Macintosh iconography: Royce Rollins drew it from Black futurist writers, street fashion and the Tokyo coffee bars he studied, and the secret menu lives on an original Macintosh fitted with a touchscreen. The same eye put the menu and the website on the Sprudge Design Awards finalist lists, and left the shipping tape on the Linea PB exactly where it landed.