‘Bikini Barista’ Coffee Shop In California Forced To Close After City Officials Say Outfits Are Too Revealing

A California coffee shop where customers were served by women wearing skimpy bikinis has been forced to close after town officials decided the operation was more on par with an “adult entertainment venue” than a coffee shop.

As Fox News reports, Bottoms Up Espresso is a chain of coffee shops in California, with its flagship locations in Modesto but other locations as far away as Bakersfield to the south and Chico to the north. Furthermore, the chain has plans to expand into other California towns, as well as into Arizona, says owner Nate Wilson.

However, plans to expand into the Bay Area town of American Canyon were over for Wilson as soon as they began. That’s because town officials decided that the baristas’ skimpy outfits are more like those of a strip club than a place to get coffee.

Though it’s only been open since December 2018, already the city has gotten at least one complaint, according to The Vallejo Times-Herald. And Community Development Director Brent Cooper says he’s seen enough to know that the business has to go.

“The business owner provided a ‘dress code.’ The costumes in the ‘dress code’ are revealing to a degree that the business meets the definition of an adult business per the city’s Municipal Code.”

It’s not just the dress code itself that’s a problem, says Cooper. It’s that when the coffee shop applied for its business license, it didn’t properly disclose in its business application that it employs “female entertainers.”

Now Wilson is done with American Canyon. Although he believes that he would win if the city took him to court, he’s chosen instead to “move on” from that city and won’t be opening a shop there.

“We do not fall into ‘adult entertainment’ as they suggest… The city is acting beyond their powers and shows you how even small government abuses their powers.”

American Canyon isn’t the only California city to try to throw hot water on Bottoms Up’s business model. As The Chico Enterprise-Record reported at the time, some residents and officials in Chico weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of the business coming to town. That was in part because the location was just a few feet down the street from a children’s dance school, and some parents were concerned about what the kids would be seeing.

Wilson, for his part, told the concerned townsfolk that nothing that went on at his coffee shops was any different than what could be seen at any California beach on a summer’s day.