Will Controversy Create Cash for a London Coffee Shop?

We can only assume that one London coffee shop owner, Adrian Jones, is a huge fan of professional wrestling, specifically the era of the Monday Night Wars, WCW and their former executive Eric Bischoff.

Why, you ask? Well the title of Eric Bischoff’s autobiography is Controversy Creates Cash and it seems that Jones and staff at Fuckoffee (probably the only coffee shop in the United Kingdom that has “Rated R” signage) have taken the book’s name to heart.

Last week, the Bermondsey coffee house was the centre of attention after they kicked up a fuss after being asked to remove their unfiltered signage by lawyers representing their landlord. The landlord had, seemingly, taken offence to the fact that a four letter swear word on the building they own.

“If [you] do not immediately remove the sign above the Property shop front…and make good any damaged caused to the exterior of the building, our client will have no option but to remove the sign themselves or issue court proceedings,” the letter said.

The coffee shop’s Twitter account posted an annotated picture of the legal letter with the caption “No humour please, we’re British.”

Naturally, this thrust the situation into the centre of a social media storm and it was picked up by a number of prominent news agencies and websites.

When asked about the Local councillor Damian O’Brien admitted that the shop had attracted complaints from residents, suggesting that the issue about the signage isn’t exactly a new one.

Arguments and counter-arguments were made. A petition was started that apportioned blame on “a few anally retentive and gormless people”.

As is always the case, common sense was quickly thrown out of the window, perhaps highlighted by a tweet was posted saying: “When we aren’t being targeted by anti-gentrification tosspots, we have to deal with humourless corporate d***wads.”

But yesterday the shop complied with the order. Yet instead of renaming or rebranding, the sweary coffee house inserted an askterisked version of the sign.

And so ‘Fuckoffee’ became ‘F*ckoffee’.

We’re sure that this will rumble on and on and on and on and on.

In a surprising twist, this isn’t the first time that the owners have been caught in a spot of bother. Earlier this year a sign reading “sorry no poor people” was photographed outside another of his coffee shops, Brick Lane Coffee.

Charming.

But as the saying goes: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”