Joe Black Coffee – Laptop Friendliness Rating

Website: joeblack.ca
Address: 2037 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg
Hours: M-T: 8a – 10:30p; F-S: 8a – 11p, Sun: 8a – 9p

Joe Black is located on Portage Avenue, across for the foot path to Assiniboine Park, I imagine this keeps them extremely busy on warm evenings and weekends. To my knowledge, the storefront has been a cafe for over a decade. Joe Black itself only opened a few years ago. The food, decor and atmosphere similar to Daily Grind. They offer a large variety of food, including ice cream (or something ice cream like) and hot meals. In my introduction to this series, I promised to note any exceptions to food or coffee quality. Joe Black is one of these exceptions. The coffee definitely sub-par.

In short, Joe Black is not a great place to work. A lot of the tables seem to be wobbly (typing on a wobbly table gets old fast). I was only able to find 2 electrical plugs, one buried behind a couch in the back and one under a service counter (the thing holding the milk, sugar, etc) at the front of the store – I didn’t really feel right using that one. Most of the tables near the front of the restaurant are essentially next to a giant patio door, making them too hot to sit at for extended periods of time. I honestly don’t remember the wifi situation, I was too busy burning up in the sun – I assume that it was totally open and fast enough…

Rating

• Busyness: Fine.
• Seating: Poor.
• Noise/Ambiance: Fine. Though, I’d expect most evenings to be far too busy to work.
• Power: Poor.
• WiFi: Fine.

Overall Rating: Poor.

Mathematically, 3 “fines”, 2 “poors” should equal a “fine.” But I really didn’t like this place as an office.

That said, as a place for an icy beverage after a day at the park I’m sure it’s excellent.