Bungalow Coffee Co., which opened last year in the Arts District, feels less like a coffeehouse and more like a greenhouse.It’s a large, airy space, with an abundance of natural light and plenty of inviting corners to tuck away in, alongside lush greenery and vivid murals.
Bungalow’s newlywed owners Shannon and Ryan Matson gave a lot of thought to what kind of place they wanted Bungalow to be—discussions that preceded even their union.
“We joked around on one of our first dates about opening up a coffee shop,” Ryan says.
Shannon has 10 years’ experience in corporate marketing, while Ryan, a business grad, worked as a project manager in high-end commercial construction on the Strip. They combined their talents to create the ultimate coffee bar workspace, one that invites patrons to “connect, collaborate and caffeinate.”
Over a delicious rosemary latte, the Matsons sat down with the Weekly to discuss entrepreneurship, learning the coffee business and the power of the arts.
Before Bungalow Coffee opened, you had a business called the Social Bungalow. What is that?
Shannon: The Social Bungalow is a marketing company, or essentially an online education company, that helps female entrepreneurs to build their offers, and basically take their skill set and say [for example], “I’m a really good writer, but I want to start my own business.” [We show them how to] turn that into an offer suite, how to market those offers and turn that into a whole LLC. ... [During 2019 and 2020], so many people were coming online and saying, “I got laid off but I have monetizable skills, what do I do?” That really equipped us financially to be able to build this. We took Social Bungalow and made this place a physical embodiment of it. ... Social Bungalow is still going strong, and growing.
This is your first coffeehouse. How did you approach this project from such radically different business backgrounds?
Ryan: We’re big on both the giving and receiving of education, so we hired a coffee shop consultant. He came in and put us through “barista boot camp,” and put the original team through a one week camp. … Then we also hired a chef [Joe Zanelli] that had been up and down the Strip; he opened up Greene Street in the Palms. He helped us create the breakfast sandwiches and the food menu.
Many people quit their jobs during the pandemic to pursue new vocations. Would you say Bungalow Coffee opened with an advantage in attracting that crowd, because you’d already laid the groundwork with the Social Bungalow?
Shannon: Definitely. That was really important to us with the physical embodiment of the Social Bungalow, because that’s all entrepreneurs who are building businesses from laptops. … With so many people going remote--even just with their corporate jobs, where it’s only one in-office day and work-from-home [the rest of the week] ... so many of them treat this like their second office.
Ryan: Our booths are actually a little longer, so two people could sit here comfortably and have the space. Everything’s a bit more roomy so you can put your stuff down and be comfortable. You look around here and there are a lot of regulars who come in here almost every day. We have officials, presidents of electrical unions meeting reps here. We have CEOs for other casinos down here all the time. We have nightlife CEOs coming in here and holding their meetings. Early on, we were able to see the level of people and individuals we were getting in this space. … You’re not gonna be able to go into a bar in the middle afternoon to have work meetings. We’re that middle of the line.
Why was the Arts District the right place to be?
Ryan: We’ve always loved Downtown. We’d actually come down here and rent bikes and travel around. We’d look at the murals, we’d go to different coffee shops. ... We hosted one of her first events for the Social Bungalow upstairs, in what’s now one of our offices. I had a big [Tone Castle] mural painted for our proposal right here, next to Art Square Theatre. We actually had our families meet here in this parking lot that night. ... So this area has been very true to our hearts from the very beginning.
I came from construction, so I knew that the best bet to get the ball moving was to buy an existing coffee shop, so we didn’t have to deal with permitting and plans and all that stuff. So there was one person that knew we were looking, and she sent us a message saying ‘Hey, did you hear that X is closing?’ So we sent them a message on Instagram. Through an Instagram DM, we bought this coffee shop.
Wait, let’s back up to this marriage proposal mural. How did that come about?
Ryan: It was literally from riding our bikes one day and I had the idea. … I started messaging local businesses saying, Hey, can I use your wall? I was presented with one alley on the other side of East Fremont, but I was like, I don’t think that’s going to be the vibe. Then I ran into Levi [Fackrell, executive director of Vegas Theatre Company], and it sparked in my mind. So I sent him a message like, “Hey, random request...” And I knew Tone Castle; he’s actually one of [our Bungalow Coffee] muralists … I was like, “This is what I’m thinking. You think we could pull this off?” So we went with a handwritten letter.
Shannon: That proposal happened in February 2020, and it’s been up this whole time. Sometimes people will vandalize the checkmark box of “yes” and “no”; they’ll put “no.” We have never touched it. But three times over, the local community has gone and painted it clean, and then re-checked the “yes.”
What are your feelings on how the Arts District has grown and changed over Bungalow’s first year?
Ryan: The growth is inevitable. We are to the point of being touched by corporate, with [the English Hotel] being a Marriott. ... But there is still that sense of community, with the murals and the artists. They want to be heard and felt.
If you show respect for the art, the art and the community shows respect for you, and that’s something we can’t let go away. That is the characteristic of the Arts District. We have artists coming in here every day, and working on their art. It’s a transient crowd, but it’s truly special.
Shannon: I don’t know if we would have opened our first brick and mortar business in any other area of town, if we would have been hugged by the community as much. We were immediately put into so many group chats by so many business owners who were trying to send traffic our way, trying to come by, asking if they could help, making suggestions for vendors. It just blew us away.
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