No Trespassing At Bear Rock Cafe

Photo courtesy of
‘Freedom of Speech’
courtesy of ‘Cazimiro’

Pop quiz: A repeat customer comes to your cafe and orders a bagel and a couple of slices of tomato. You:

  1. Give them the tomato slices for free
  2. Charge them a reasonable fee for the slices
  3. Demand they pay for a sandwich, and then ban the from the store

If you answered 1 or 2, you might be ready to manage a neighborhood cafe. If you answered 3, you might be ready to run the Bear Rock Cafe in Falls Church. Seems Cazimiro‘s pregnant wife stopped by at the store which is right below the condo where they live, the owner lashed out at the cashier for only charging 50 cents for the tomato slices, and then asked her not to return to the store.

After the couple posted about their experience on Yelp, the owner apparently tried to involve Arlington police, getting them to issue a no trespass notice. Doesn’t exactly seem like the sort of thing you’d do to neighborhood customers (or, really, any customers) over such a small infraction. And reading some of the other reviews, this off the wall behavior doesn’t seem to have been a one time thing.

Born in Lebanon, Samer moved to DC to go to college. A lot of good that did him. Twenty-two years later, he still lives in the area. When he’s not writing for a blog or tweeting incessantly, he wanders the streets (and the globe) photographing whatever gets in his way.

4 thoughts on “No Trespassing At Bear Rock Cafe”

  1. I used to live in the Westlee, above that Bear Rock Cafe. Both the condo building and Bear Rock left a lot to be desired. We also had issues with the dry cleaners in that building. My guess is everyone is paying way too much rent. That building sold out before it was built and then was hit with foreclosures once the market tanked.

  2. Nice. I don’t know what the price of their condo has to do anything though (from his Yelp review).

  3. Thank you for this post. Bear Rock Cafe — this is called the Streisand Effect. It is an extremely efficient way to lose customers who learn of your behavior.

  4. @jack sorry, I meant the price a bear rock and other business tenants are probably paying to lease their space, not the price the residents are paying for their condo.

    living in that building though, when people are upside down in their mortgages and their neighbor is foreclosing, that contributes to a lot of misery and animosity in the building. perhaps that has improved as new owners bought up some of the units.