Alfred.coffee Menu

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Ammiano Hibbert

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:41:44 PM8/3/24

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Beloved Alfred Coffee is serving up caffeine in all its finest forms from the lobby, including their signature matcha menu, alongside a menu of takeaway food. Come in for a quick cup and get complimentary 30-minute parking, or stay and catch up on emails with free wifi and plenty of spaced-out seating in the lobby.

The Los Angeles-based coffee shop chain unveiled its newest Westwood location Monday. Located across from the Hammer Museum, Alfred Coffee brings well-crafted beverages and vibrant interior decor to Westwood Village. Though the area is already saturated with a variety of coffee shops, Alfred provides Bruins with distinctive menu options that are otherwise unavailable.

Though packed with older adults in the earlier hours, a more youthful atmosphere develops the second UCLA students file in. Customers can choose from a variety of seating options such as single-stooled bar seats, two-person study tables or a large communal table at the center.

For customers who do not prefer coffee, Alfred also offers a caffeine-packed matcha latte. The barista recommends substituting in oat milk, an alteration that balances the bitterness normally found in powdered matcha. The latte tastes earthy but subtly sweet, which highlights the grassy-flavored undertones of premium quality matcha.

While Alfred offers top-quality coffee and tea, the location, lack of power outlets and prices are potential cons for UCLA students. Situated more than a mile from Hedrick Hall, Alfred Westwood Village is not as easily accessible for on-campus Bruins as Upside Down or the Starbucks on Weyburn Avenue. And in terms of pricing, a standard latte ranges from $5 to $6, but additives such as milk alternatives and syrup can skyrocket the cost up into the $7 range.

The only thing I really wish this did was somehow integrate with Caffeine if you have it installed. It would be awesome if I typed "coffee 60" and for 60 minutes the little caffeine icon would show as active

Well, it doesn't use caffeine. Caffeine is a third-party application, and Caffeinate is native to 10.8+. There are other workflows that control Caffeine (I wrote one, and there are others as well. I think if you search, or there might be a link in my signature).

Honestly, I prefer Caffeinate because you needn't install any other software, and the less you can have on your computer, the better. (Also, my menu bar is already way too cluttered). Alfred provides a great interface for Caffeinate itself, which exists through this workflow and one that I made. Check out this one and mine, and, if you like them, then just uninstall Caffeine. Otherwise, look for one of the Caffeine workflows.

If you really, really, really want the Caffeine icon in the menu when using Caffeinate, then you'll probably have to code your own version that interfaces with Caffeinate, but that seems to be way more trouble than it's worth.

So basically CoffeeCoffee looks like it's working (according to Alfred's menu results), but my mac still goes to sleep. On the other hand, Caffeinate Control both looks like it's working and also actually works.

@miketheburrito Does your computer go to sleep, or does your display? Very different things. CoffeeCoffee stops your computer from going to sleep but does not stop your display from turning off. Both are easy to do, but this workflows only acts on the computer.

The thing that tripped me up was that I forgot I had apparently selected "Keep the display awake" in the Caffeinate Control workflow options - this is what that had me thinking CoffeeCoffee "wasn't working."

Can I take a page out of the Yak Saver workflow and add a delay set for a specific time coming off the script filter and then have it toss up a notification? And if I did this, these changes would get overwritten on the next update, correct? This wouldn't fall under the user changes that get retained during an update?

@vitor I wanted to let you know i used this wonderful workflow to help me back up 20TB from a 5400 spinning disk to a 60TB RAID (also spinning disks) took 30 hours but happened without incident thanks to "Coffee Coffee"

There are others like them, all patiently waiting for their chance to snap a quick selfie in front of the just-opened tea stop, a feminine-modern space with a menu of inventive teas from around the world. Frequently Instagrammed favorites include the iced matcha green tea and the chai tea latte (with boba added, of course). This is no ordinary street, and this is no ordinary caffeine station: The location is Melrose Place, and this Alfred Tea Room.

Sormeh Azad, an interior designer who dreamed up celeb-happy nightclub The Nice Guy, was a frequent customer during Alfred's early days. "I was designing and building [the club] down the street on La Cienega and was often on the construction site early morning and really needed a coffee," she remembers.

"At that time, I was there for the coffee but staying for the environment, [which sometimes] makes all the difference for me," she admits. "Call it a placebo effect, but somehow when a space is well-designed, the coffee tastes better."

The man behind Alfred is not named Alfred. He's Joshua Zad, a 34-year-old commercial real estate developer. And if anyone's surprised that he's the founder of one of LA's best (and certainly aesthetically-pleasing) coffee stops, it's him.

"It's still just the weirdest thing to me because I never thought in a million years I'd be involved in food and beverage," he reveals. "One thousand percent no. I think for most people it crosses their mind; it's a really sexy idea to have a restaurant or a bar. But I never had [those] aspirations."

"Obviously, I have a stake in [the area]," he admits. Combining his real estate intel and entrepreneurial spirit, in 2012 he signed the lease for 8428 Melrose Place, a cozy space beneath high-end aesthetician Kate Somerville's skincare studio and that previously housed edgy-luxe label Faith Connexion.

"It was kind of a gamble and there was no one there yet," he says. "Melrose Place has always traditionally been a sleepy tree-lined street, and in the past it's been mainly antique shops and rug dealers," he says. "I was comfortable with the fact that the street itself is so beautiful and speaks for itself."

Spanning less than a quarter of a mile between La Cienega Boulevard and Melrose Avenue, the low-key stretch's high-end boom began when Marc Jacobs and Marni arrived about 12 years ago. The year the inked dried on Alfred's lease, Carolina Herrera, Oscar de la Renta, L'Agence, and Equipment opened their doors.

Hit up friendly the local coffee shop on a weekday at high noon and it's clear that Alfred's arrival is a win-win for nearby inhabitants, Melrose Place shoppers, and the high-end street's tenants. Over the past three years, the stylish stretch has welcomed a slew of cool new kids to the block, including The Row, Nine Zero One Salon, Rachel Comey, and Vanessa Seward.

"[Alfred's] locations tend to be perfectly placed where fashionable people hang out," explains Matt Kang, editor-in-chief of our sister site Eater LA. "It's become preferred in the fashionable set because of its stylish decor and unfussy service."

When it opened in 2013, the caf was perfect pit stop for label lovers seeking java jolts during their Melrose Place retail therapy: fashion blogosphere pioneers like Chiara Ferragni (who even raved to us about Alfred), Aimee Song, and Emily Schuman sprinkled their blog posts and social media snaps with Alfred's signature #butfirstcoffee sleeves. And when the world's most famous fashion blogger declares your cup of joe the "cutest coffee ever", her fans will likely want to drink it up, too.

An ongoing series of collaborations with cult-cool LA labels, have furthered Alfred's fashion credits. When Alfred, In The Alley opened two years ago, its coffee sleeves featured the work of California design star Kelly Wearstler. For the debut of its Silver Lake location, the cafe tapped Clare V. to design its charming coffee sleeves. It's even teamed with cool tech accessories brand This Is Ground, which created a leather cup holder last fall.

As New York Times bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell famously noted in his book, Outliers, location and timing, combined with drive and (for the most part) talent, equal the secret to success. In the case of Alfred Coffee, Zad capitalized on being at the right place (Los Angeles) at the right time (a decaf street during the digital age). While social media stardom certainly thrust Alfred before the thumb-scrolling Millennial masses, its founder was clearly onto something.

Pre-2010, any pretty eatery was simply photogenic. These days, when hashtags provide an aesthetically-pleasing catalog of every noun and verb imaginable, anything that's decidedly well-designed is "IG-worthy." This idea was not lost during the M&D phase of Alfred, says Zad, and it certainly hasn't been for the rest of the restaurant industry.

As interior and event designer Ken Fulk told Tasting Table earlier this year, a lens-pleasing eatery is no accident. "It's like the chicken and egg: Does Instagram inspire design, or is it design that inspires Instagram?" he revealed. "It's a bit of both."

Step into any of the caf chain's five LA outposts and try to resist pulling out your smartphone. Alfred in the Alley is punctuated by bold, monochromatic tiles that pull you towards the sleek stainless steel counter; Brentwood, as Zad describes it, is "very Williams-Sonoma, but edgy."

Being shutterbug-friendly alongside offering a healthy foodie-approved menu (which includes Farm Shop pastries, Cafe Gratitude grub, and the unabashedly LA #10dollarlatte), good customer service, and even its employee uniforms (provided by local apron company Hedley & Bennett) were "[equally] important parts of our overall strategy," he says. Beyond designing attractive interiors, the ambition behind Alfred 1.0 was to offer a quality commodity in a stylish, approachable setting.