Without a doubt, the most important part of any ride is the pre-, mid- or post-ride coffee stop.  For the uninitiated, it may seem like a good opportunity to catch up, but there is so much more to them than just that.  If you want to avoid embarrassment, here’s how to fit in at the coffee shop.

Dress to impress

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Dress in your sharpest kit; it has to be tight and clean.  No grease-stained commuting kits for this one.

Get your order right

Acceptable coffees include a flat white, macchiato, and piccolo.  Essentially, the more pretentious the name, the better.  Anyone caught ordering a hot chocolate will be abandoned immediately.

Get your bike clean 

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Your coffee stop is more about showing off your bike than building relationships.  Bringing a dirty bike on your Sunday morning spin is like rolling up to a gala dinner in your work ute.

Forget a house deposit, you need smashed avo.

Bernard Salt may not like it, but your riding buddies will.  If you are going to order food, make sure it’s the most expensive avo that’s been smashed, beaten or crushed onto the fanciest bread on the menu.

Image by Lachlan Hardy – CC BA 3.0

Be ethical 

If you’re bringing the group to a new coffee shop, you’d better damn well check the coffee is fair trade, ethically sourced and generally greener than a pocket square on St Patrick’s day.

Be sure to show everyone how amazing your meal/coffee is

A true coffee shop hopper will never miss an opportunity to show much healthier they are than everyone else by sharing a photo of their stop to every social media possible – Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram – if you can put a photo on it, you should.  Remember, if there’s no photo, it didn’t happen.

Keep your cleats on

As proud roadies, we must assert our dominance (and that pristine kit) by walking around in cleats and annoying other customers, so be sure to walk around as much and as loudly as possible.