Lake Stevens coffee shop owner says take kids elsewhere if they’re going to act out

The Lake Stevens coffee shop owner getting flack for asking a couple of women and their children to leave after they reportedly made a mess of scone crumbs on the floor is maintaining her right to address customers who aren’t behaving appropriately in her establishment.

Rainy MacDuff, the owner of Rainy Days Caffe, isn’t denying she banned the military mother’s two young children.

“I said exactly what she said that I said. I was like, ‘You guys are going to need to leave. You’re welcome to come back, but you can’t bring your kids. Somebody is going to come over and clean this up now,'” MacDuff tells KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

MacDuff also admits to posting a photo of the crumb evidence on the café’s Facebook page after the party left, with the caption “Like to take a moment to thank our customers with small children whose kids don’t make a mess. A couple of ladies came in today and this is the mess their children made.”

While a big fuss has been made over the photo, MacDuff tells Monson it in no way identified the offending parties and she really did feel like a shout-out was needed for all the families that bring in children daily and encourage them to act appropriately.

“We have a ton of kids that come in with their parents and I mean a lot of kids. They come in with their parents and they don’t make a mess, and we’re talking little kids too, and I really honestly wanted to thank them for not making a mess in my coffee shop. Because it’s a big deal. They take a lot of pride in it, as do I.”

MacDuff doesn’t think of her coffee shop as just a coffee shop and takes pride in the establishment being more of a community gathering place. It’s also a very popular place to conduct business, she explains.

“I can’t tell you how many people here in Lake Stevens have started a business in the corner on their laptops and wi-fi,” says MacDuff. “This is a community-oriented coffee shop where everybody should be allowed to enjoy peace and quiet.”

The mother and children that MacDuff chose to approach were so disruptive, she says, that she had to cut short a meeting she was holding with her insurance agent.

“We couldn’t hear over the noise – crying, screaming – it’s the stuff that honestly most moms are just used to it and they don’t think anything about it,” says MacDuff. “The kid was having a meltdown.”

To all the people that say she should have let them stay and vacuumed up the mess after, MacDuff says no.

“That’s not how you get to act in my shop,” says MacDuff. “We are basically, I would say kid-oriented, but we are not oriented to people who are going to let their children act out.”

MacDuff says this isn’t the first time people have disagreed with her candid approach, and it doesn’t sound like it will necessarily be the last.

“Look at Yelp, I’ve got a couple reports that are like, ‘Oh she was rude to me.’ No I wasn’t rude to you. I told you, ‘No,'” says MacDuff. “I don’t know why everybody thinks they’re so entitled to not hear the truth. And the truth is people make messes and the other truth is people make mistakes.”

For those that don’t think their kids can behave appropriately, MacDuff says there is a fantastic bakery just down the street.

“There’s this darling little bakery, the Oven Monkey, just right around the corner and she’s a school teacher, they cater to children, they’ve got the tile floors and kudos to them for that.”

After hearing MacDuff’s version of events, Dori says, “You’re my kind of person, Rainy.”

“I think everybody should get into the Rainy Days Caffé in Lake Stevens.”

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