Patty Roberts grew up as the daughter of a preacher in the Church of Christ. That meant she and her family moved around a lot growing up—Texas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and, finally, all the way across the country to Eugene.

It was early summer in 1966, and Patty was 14 years old, about to enter high school. Within a month of her arrival, she met Jim Roberts at church. After she turned 18, she and Jim were married in a ceremony on Christmas Eve, 1969. 

It was the beginning of a relationship that would help transform the way Portlanders thought about and drank their coffee. Now, however, like too many other local small businesses, theirs may be on the verge of closing. 

Jim and Patty’s journey toward Portland coffee fame began in the early ‘80s, when, following a stint running a coffee shop in Newport where fishermen on occasion would trade freshly-caught crabs for coffee, they opened the first location of what would become Coffee People on NW 23rd. Coffee People took off—winning fans for its quality, innovativeness, and Eugene-inspired, tye-dye, chalkboard aesthetic. 

The business was a family affair: The couple’s three kids all worked at Coffee People, and Jim, who died last year, was the lifeforce. 

“He loved cooking, he loved making food for people, he loved watching people eat his food,” Roberts said. “He’d watch their faces to see if they liked it or not.”

The couple sold Coffee People after a failed attempt at a nationwide expansion in the early 2000s, but returned with the eponymous Jim & Patty’s Coffee in 2003—running the new business with the same ethos that helped make the old one a hit.  

“It’s always meant to be more like an English pub, where we know each other,” Roberts said. “It was always our belief that that kind of atmosphere would sustain us. And I still believe it—it's just a little bit harder to pull off.”

In the last handful of years, it’s become much more difficult—to the point that, last month, Roberts wrote in a GoFundMe fundraiser that the business is on the brink of closing. 

Roberts said that while their sales have taken a modest hit in recent years, the stores remain reasonably busy—with the Fremont location actually showing growth of late. 

The issue, Roberts said, is not that people have stopped showing up to support the shops—it’s that nearly every other aspect of running a coffee shop in Portland has gotten more expensive. Labor costs, for instance, have soared. 

“Back in the day, blue collar folks had manufacturing jobs they could go to and nobody relied on a little business like this to make a living,” Roberts said. “They would work here on their way to their career, or maybe it's a housewife who worked here part time for a little extra money. It wasn't normal for people to look to a restaurant job for a living wage.”

Things have changed since Roberts and her husband first went into business. In Portland–a city renowned for its coffee shops and award-winning restaurants–food service workers comprise just over 8 percent of the region's labor force.

It’s not just labor costs. Food costs have also increased, disproportionately impacting businesses like Jim & Patty’s Coffee that make the items on their menu from scratch. A case of eggs, Roberts said, is up to $85—in part, Roberts said, because of a new Oregon law requiring that commercial egg producers sell cage-free eggs.

It’s a law Roberts says she supports, but one of a number of changes that she sees driving prices up to the point where she’s taken aback. 

“I can’t believe what we’re charging,” she said. 

The Jim & Patty’s story is far from unique. Hundreds of restaurants and coffee shops in Portland have closed since the onset of the pandemic, with inflation and other structural economic forces driving up the costs of labor and supplies. A number of restaurants took on debt to stay open during the pandemic and have struggled to pay it off. 

Yume Delegato, senior communications coordinator at Prosper Portland, wrote in an email to the Mercury that a group survey of small business owners showed that plenty are struggling. 

“What we have heard about most frequently is having enough working capital and access to capital, marketing, business finances, and operations,” Delegato wrote. “We also hear that employee recruitment/retention is also a unique challenge.”

Roberts said she “searched her heart” in an attempt to discern whether Jim would have supported her launching the fundraiser. In the end, the response to it has helped to confirm the nature of the couple’s relationship with the city.

“He’s spoken of his gratefulness to the Portland community so many times, for taking care of us,” Roberts said. “We kind of feel like we've been taken care of in our adult lives by Portland. It's a funny way to give back by asking for help, but that’s kind of what we've done.” 

The GoFundMe has raised more than $35,000 so far and remains open. The haul has allowed Roberts to make three payments on back rent and increase the company’s payment to Wells Fargo for its line of credit while still making payroll. 

Those kinds of payments may allow Jim & Patty’s to live on, but its future remains uncertain. The coffee shop’s lease at its Beaverton location has several more years on it, but the lease on its Fremont location is up in December—and Roberts said that, while the landlord there has been “extremely patient,” she doesn’t yet know whether the shop can afford to stay.

Roberts also said she’s open to offers to buy the business, assuming it may be more attractive to potential buyers with a lighter debt load and a leaner operations setup.

“We’ll try to continue to trim and get more efficient, maybe focus more on our coffee cakes,” Roberts said.

In the meantime, Roberts and her team are working on a number of other one-off events to raise money. They’re putting together a cookbook featuring a number of signature recipes and are preparing to auction off an extensive collection of memorabilia from the Coffee People era over the first eight days of October. 

“I feel a huge responsibility to be a good steward,” Roberts said. “I don’t know if we’ll make it—but I do promise these folks that I’ll do my best.”

UPDATE: On November 5, Roberts announced via the business' social media that the two remaining Jim and Patty’s locations, in Beaverton and in Portland, will close on November 11, 2024. "Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for your support..." Roberts wrote. "Now I will need to find a job. If anyone has any ideas for an old lady who has been off the job market for over 40 years, let me know!"

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