Oatmeal Bar & OATMEAL MODELING
From 2014-2016 Five Watt Coffee offered a Sunday morning oatmeal bar for hungry patrons.
I was the oatmeal bar’s first curator. Part hot cereal cook, part experience designer, the oatmeal bar lead to a collaboration with foodie and artist, AnnaMarie Vu, and many full bellies.
Role: oatmeal curator
Oat-rigin story
Being a longtime hot cereal evangelist, I asked a friend to photograph me posing with bowls of oatmeal. I shared the photos online—hoping others would get as pumped about porridge as I am—only to be “discovered” by a man in Chicago who produced an oatmeal modeling calendar called Haute Cereal Man. My big break! The calendar featured men (fully clothed) posing as the oatmeal everyman for each decade of the 20th century.
Recognizing my passion for oats and grains, the owners of Five Watt Coffee invited me to be the host of their Sunday Service Oatmeal Bar. The rest, as they say, is history. While Five Watt Coffee no longer serves oatmeal on Sundays (their oatmeal bar was converted into a trendier toast bar after my retirement), my cereal legacy is memorialized in a plaque that I made and hung on the wall of the coffeeshop.
Not your grandpa’s oatmeal
Guests could build their hot cereal a la carte or select the oatmeal du jour. Poo-emoji pancakes were served on special occasions.
A Full service oatmeal bar
Live jazz aided in digestion. After breakfast patrons could collect hand-drawn Sunday Service role-playing cards or write in the oatmeal guestbook.
