What time should coffee shops open? The question has fueled debates between customers and baristas. Many customers on social media are venting their frustrations about coffee shops’ “inconvenient” hours, arguing that they either open too late or close too early.
“I’m f——- getting tired of these coffee shops,” TikToker Roe (@roetheone) said in a video. “Tell me why someone recommended me to go to a coffee shop, right? They’re like, ‘I think you’d really like it.’ I’ll just stop there on my way to work. I go and look at the hours. They’re open at 9 a.m. What the f—? Like, who the f— is your clientele, bro?”
Another TikToker, mgante (@mgante17), doubled down, arguing that coffee shops that don’t open before 7 a.m. should “make way for the ones that do.” He said: “What kind of coffee shop doesn’t open until 7 a.m.? Coffee shops should open at a bare minimum of 5:30 in the morning. Who are you serving? I’m going to work. I want to get a cup of coffee. How are you not going to open until 7 a.m.? If you’re not ready to open up at 5:30, you don’t really want to run a coffee shop.”
The barista strike back
However, many baristas have offered reasons for coffee shops’ so-called “inconvenient” hours. Sabrina Kaylor, owner of the Bizarre Coffee chain in New Mexico, noted that while her shop operates daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., many independent coffee shops have far fewer staff than she does. “They may only have one person working there. You may only work so many hours as one person,” she said.
Max De Los Santos, also known as Maxie the Barista, pointed out that customers often overlook the people working behind the counter. “Y’all say this and then y’all never actually show up to the café at 5:30 in the f—— morning, and yet you expect people to wake up out of their slumber,” she said on her video.
She went on to explain the steps a coffee shop owner and their staff must take to open the shop that early. “I’ve worked at businesses that closed because they weren’t making any money because the foot traffic just didn’t exist, businesses that extend their hours because they started seeing that there is a need to stay open later,” De Los Santos told TODAY.com. “All of that still has to make financial sense for us to even do that in the first place.”
De Los Santos, a café latte art artist, café consultant, and coffee cart owner who spent 12 years working at Starbucks, also discussed the challenges face by small-business cafe owners. “It all falls apart café you open a local café without the kind of backing Starbucks has to be open at 5:30 a.m., because people say they want it, but they never actually show up,” De Los Santos explained. “So I don’t understand what the complaint is.”
Published: Oct 21, 2026 08:30 am