A Q&A with Clark Johnson & Ricky Rickman of Clark’s Coffee
We sat down with Clark and Ricky, the duo behind Clark’s Coffee on Belmont, to talk about falling in love through coffee, starting a coffee shop in a garage, and how a space in Sunnyside came along at exactly the right time.
Tell me a little about yourselves. How did you both end up in Portland?
Clark: I grew up near Chicago. My brother had moved out here and I came to visit him in 2018. It was my first time in the Pacific Northwest and I immediately fell in love with it. The next year, I packed everything up and drove out here.
Coffee has always been somewhere in my life. I worked in coffee in high school. After moving to Portland I worked at See See Motor Coffee, Coava Coffee, and Floyd’s Coffee.
Ricky: I grew up in California and moved to Portland in 2022. Growing up, I always loved coffee shops because of that community-oriented feeling. When I moved here, I worked at St. Honoré and then Nossa Familia, where I really got the opportunity to learn more about coffee. There’s really no better place to truly learn coffee than in Portland.
Is coffee also how you met?
Ricky: Yeah, for a long time we were kind of circling each other. We had a ton of mutual friends. I would go to See See’s all the time, but somehow we kept missing each other.
I lived around the corner from See See’s and was trying to push myself to get out of the house and make local friends. See See’s hosted a lot of events, and eventually a mutual friend introduced me to Clark at one. We started hanging out as friends, Clark asked me out, and we’ve pretty much been together ever since.
How long before you started talking about opening a coffee shop together?
Clark: On our second date!
Ricky: We realized really early on that we had both independently wanted to start our own shop one day. Eventually it became this question of, if we’re going to work this much and be under this much stress anyway, why not put that energy into something of our own? Living in Portland made it feel possible. Coffee is so important and well-loved here.
How did Clark’s Coffee start?
Clark: We always knew we wanted to start our own business, but wanted to start small and make sure we could actually work together. So, we thought, let’s try it out of our garage. Maybe we’ll do it once a month and see what happens. And then suddenly, we were open four days a week.
Ricky: We did not expect the garage, of all places, to pop. We had regulars!
It gave us a way to open the door to the community and let people understand what Clark’s Coffee is. By the time we were ready for a shop, there were already people who knew us and wanted to see us succeed.
So how did this Sunnyside storefront enter the picture?
Clark: Funny enough, this neighborhood had been part of my Portland story from the beginning. When I first visited in 2018, two of the first coffee shops my brother brought me to were the Stumptown that used to be in this space and Bare Bones down the street. My friend Ash, who owns Mixtape, told us this space was going to become available. At that point, we weren’t ready.
And then the opportunity came back?
Ricky: Yeah. We spent those next few months building Clark’s Coffee and
figuring out who we were. It grew way more than we expected. Then Ash
came back to us and basically said, “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider this?”
By then, we had built a community around the garage. We knew we could work together. We knew people liked what we were doing. We tried the space for a month before committing to the lease, and everything just lined up. It really was the perfect place at the perfect time.
What do you love about Sunnyside?
Clark: I love that there’s a school next to us. You have kids and families, artists, service workers, people who actually live here.
You look around the shop and somebody is talking about a mural they just got commissioned. Teachers are talking about the school. A family is talking about their vacation. We’ve overheard first dates. We love being a central place for our customers to come and feel like they belong here.
Ricky: We have some of the nicest customers I’ve ever experienced working in customer service. People come in and draw, or work or hang out for hours. That’s exactly what we wanted.
What does being a “neighborhood coffee shop” mean to you?
Clark: It means being community-oriented, making people feel comfortable and welcomed the second they walk in the door. We want people to know they can rely on us. You can use the bathroom. You can ask us for hot water. You can sit at a table and stay as long as you need. You can come talk to us about an event. It sounds like little stuff, but that’s what makes somewhere feel welcoming.
What would you like to see more of in Sunnyside?
Clark: More collaboration. More people coming in and saying, “Hey, I have this thing I want to try,” and us being able to say, “Cool, debut it here.” We want to work with groups like the Sunnyside Shower Project, support neighborhood events, and host pop-ups. We’re still a small business, but the door is open.
This truly feels like the neighborhood coffee shop of our dreams. We love getting to know everyone and being such a big part of the Sunnyside community. It’s a dream come true.
Clark’s Coffee is at 3356 SE Belmont St. and it’s open Mon.-Fri, 7:30 a.m.–4 p.m.,
Sat. & Sun. 8 a.m.–4 p.m. clarkscoffeepdx.com.