Joe Shum Seruto, owner and founder of PDX Coffee Club, makes a latte for a customer.

PDX Coffee Club: a specialty coffee experience without the shameful looks for never having heard the terms affogato, ristretto or lungo.

Skip the scoffs, eye rolls and cold shoulder treatment that some specialty coffee shops offer by visiting PDX Coffee Club.

“Anyone is welcome here, from a barista champion to your first-time coffee drinker and there’s no judgment,” Joe Shum Seruto, founder of PDX Coffee Club, said.

Shum Seruto made it his mission to make the world of specialty coffee relaxed and welcoming by opening PDX Coffee Club, which recently moved locations from the Portland Food Hall to Please Louise in the Hillsdale neighborhood.

The cafe on wheels, tucked in the corner of Please Louise’s pizza shop, 6369 S.W. Capitol Highway, serves roasts all sourced from Portland.

“ The mission of the PDX Coffee Club was not only to appeal to coffee nerds, but to share the stories and tastes of all of the things that are Portland,” Shum Seruto said.

Getting to Portland

Shum Seruto met his now husband, Vicente, when they were 18 years old and studying at Santa Monica College in Los Angeles. Joe Shum Seruto studied photography, while Vicente Shum Seruto studied civil engineering, later switching into architecture.

When the two turned 30 in late 2019, they thought: “Let’s do big things.”

On that list of big things was moving to Portland.

Joe Shum Seruto and his mom were celebrating her birthday in the Rose City in January 2020, when a joking prod to look at houses turned into checking off his to-do list of doing big things.

One thing after another, the couple moved to Portland, in their Hillsdale neighborhood house, in March 2020.

Becoming reality

Originally, PDX Coffee Club was a theoretical subscription box service.

Until {span}Shum Seruto {/span}realized he would need to sell 4,000 boxes per month to survive.

So, he started with a cart, the same cart he uses to this day.

PDX Coffee Club was just an idea in winter of 2022, but opened in July 2023 after his friends pushed him hard to launch the business and helped calm his worries.

It started in downtown because Shum Seruto said it was where he envisioned the concept existing. The space was central to tourists and surrounded by the folks supplying his craft.

The couple spent their first years in Portland having many coffee dates to learn the coffee scene and develop an understanding of the never-ending list of local roasters.

Vicente Shum Seruto said watching his partner’s business flourish over the years has been amazing. He also gets the perks of being the taste taster, among helping in various roles.

“Through a lot of tasting, we tried to have a really curated menu of what we felt were like the most exciting coffees in Portland at a given time,” Joe Shum Seruto said.

Each month they try to bring on a different roaster before rotating them out a few months later.

Shum Seruto said the first version of his menu was bare bones, just how he wanted it. He wanted to focus on the coffee, bringing on wild and fruity espressos such as Proud Mary’s “Ghost Rider.”

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to share these really crazy coffees with people,” he said. “Some really resonated with it, and others were like, ‘Where’s my vanilla latte?’”

Over time, Shum Seruto said he hesitantly reflected on what service meant and what the mission of PDX Coffee Club was.

As the good reviews rolled in, they worked to curate a specialty menu, playing around with seasonal and signature drinks, while still keeping it hyperlocal.

The menu features drinks including the “Cream Float Latte,” Briar Rose Creamery’s Fromage Blanc gently whipped with cream and Madagascar vanilla served atop an iced latte; the “Coffee Soda,” sparkling coffee soda made with sweetened cold brew concentrate, vanilla and spices with an optional splash of cream or milk; and the “Pear Spiced Chai Latte,” Soul Chai’s spicy Masala chai, with its black pepper and warming cardamom, paired with the subtle sweetness of pureed pear.

Doug the Douglas Fir

Featured on PDX Coffee Club’s branding is a tree that looks rather buzzed, or borderline high, as Shum Seruto would say.

“I don’t want specialty coffee to be something that’s only for a certain group of people and so I wanted to have a logo that was Portland quirky,” Shum Seruto said. “I didn’t want this stark white building of nothing in the interior and this monolith of an espresso machine and a barista that’s way too cool, and you walk in and you’re like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

So, Doug the Douglas Fir was born. The tree sports glazed eyes with a piping cup of joe in hand and is dressed for the holidays at times, rocking a witch’s hat, skull mug, start topper, Pride flag and more.

Shum Seruto commissioned an artist to bring his idea of a buzzed tree to life.

The people have his mom to thank for donning the mascot with the name Doug. Shum Seruto said his mom would passively refer to their logo as Doug, walking around going, “I love Doug, I love Doug,” so it stuck.

History of hospitality

Tower Pizza, a sports bar and grill, in Los Angeles is owned by Shum Seruto’s parents. Growing up, he worked at multiple local restaurants and his first job was throwing birthday parties at the local bowling alley.

“I’ve always kind of been within food and beverage,” Shum Seruto said. “I love serving people.”

What he found, though, was the difference between the food and drink careers, and how the dynamics changed between bartending to being a barista.

In his experience bartending, he would be servicing people looking to drown out the day. As a barista, he instead experiences people looking to start the day.

“So, rather than be that source of drowning people’s problems, I can be a happy start to someone’s day,” Shum Seruto said.

Fro

m photography to coffee

It might come as a surprise, but Shum Seruto said the skills he learned doing analog photography were a semi-seamless translation into specialty coffee.

The endless cups of caffeine to survive college played a small role in his coffee studies.

While studying at Santa Monica College, Shum Seruto picked up a bartending gig. The catch was that he wasn’t much of a drinker, so he said he felt like an odd bartender.

Once graduated, his mom gifted him a little Breville espresso machine, which he said he sucked at using. He read books to better his craft and found a lot of similarities between analog photography and coffee making.

“ I decided shortly after graduating, I was like, well, you know, if I can make drinks at night, I’ll try making drinks in the day,” Shum Seruto said.

It was 2016 when he quit his three-year bartending stint to switch to being a barista. Nearly 10 years later, he’s still at it, thanks to a little Breville machine.

Shum Seruto managed Stumptown Coffee Roasters at the Ace Hotel upon moving to the city, but his time was cut short due to the pandemic.

“My first real job as a manager was to furlough everyone, which sucked,” Shum Seruto said.

He was laid off soon after.

Later, he returned to the company to work as a barista for a year and a half before working for Proud Mary, though the chaos, which he said adds to its charm, wasn’t aligned with his ideal vision of service.

Taking a break from coffee, and spending a year with family who were starting a new business, the thought donned on him that Portland has more specialty roasters than one can count.

“It’s just an incredibly large pool of talented coffee people,” Shum Seruto said.

It reminded him of the very reason he once was a tourist to the city.

“I was reflecting on, as this was still in the pandemic, that a lot of news about Portland was really negative and I wondered how something could be made that instead celebrated something that I thought was a really great aspect of the city,” Shum Seruto said.

His business venture started as a means to showcase Portland roasters, large and small, and highlight the shared stories of Portland’s coffee scene.

Looking to expand

Shum Seruto always planned to build out the business in downtown and then open a second location, using the cart, in the Hillsdale neighborhood.

But as most know, things don’t always go to plan.

They left the Portland Food Hall due to uncertainties for their future there, moved the cart to their local community, and are crossing their fingers for the next move to be a spot in downtown.

Shum Seruto said they are applying to the James Beard Public Market, which is anticipated to be opened later this year. But, if that option fails to work, it won’t prevent PDX Coffee Club from breaking into downtown.

Portland had a bleak narrative painted over the past few years, Shum Seruto said, but he said he knows it’s still the same beautiful city it’s always been.

“I think that it’s important that we don’t just focus on the negative things when considering our city center, but instead try to really have something that celebrates what I think makes Portland so incredible,” Shum Seruto said.

One of the most important aspects for him is to not rush the timeline.

“I want to make sure we build the correct business to not just be able to meet our financial obligations of having a team, but to produce an environment to where people really are able to thrive in their work life and their personal life,” Shum Seruto said. “That’s really my main priority over rapid expansion.”

He hopes to be in downtown within a year or so, and said he’s “putting the fire under his own butt” to make sure that happens.

“It makes me so happy to see people resonate with our idea, these Portland coffees and what we’re doing. There are people here playing board games, meeting with their family or getting hot chocolates with their kids. I think it’s just one of the things that makes a cafe such a beautiful space,” Shum Seruto said. “It just makes me feel great to be able to be a part of that and serve that community.”