Attention Coffee opens in Portland with recovery-focused drinks

Attention Coffee did not open like a typical Portland café. It landed inside the shared lobby of BodyRiot in Sellwood, folding specialty coffee into a wellness studio built around strength training, yoga, Pilates, massage and contrast therapy.

That makes the new shop feel less like a standalone counter and more like a daily ritual stop for the people moving through BodyRiot before class, after a sauna session or while settling into the open-seating work area. The concept leans hard into that overlap. Owner and roaster Andrew Plambeck wants drinks that work for recovery as well as espresso, and the menu stretches well beyond the usual latte run.

Two signature drinks make the point clearly. The Pump Cooler is pitched as a pre-workout style drink with coconut water, beetroot, maca and cordyceps. The Tart Cherry Cooler goes in a recovery direction, mixing coconut water, tart cherry juice, magnesium, pink salt and L-theanine. Alongside those fitness-minded builds, Attention Coffee still covers the fundamentals with espresso pulled on a Nuova Simonelli Appia Life, batch brew through a Bunn system and cold brew through a ColdPerk Café 2 system.

The shop is tied tightly to the BodyRiot project and to Caroline Plambeck, Andrew Plambeck’s wife and the founder of BodyRiot. The studio says its community space includes Attention Coffee, work zones, events and programs for all ages, with space to work or socialize before, after or between classes. That is the real wager here: that a café can be part of the same circuit as training, recovery and lingering, not just the morning commute or a remote-work session.

The buildout behind that idea was anything but quick. The combined project came out of a renovation that took more than 10 months in a building that is more than 100 years old, giving the opening a neighborhood anchor that feels rooted in Sellwood rather than imported as a wellness trend. Attention Coffee describes itself as family-owned, small-batch and born in a home roaster during the pandemic, and says it was built inside BodyRiot to support the work.

At 8532 SE 17th Ave. in Portland, the shop also puts a practical rhythm around the concept, with weekday hours from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and weekend hours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. In a city full of serious coffee, Attention Coffee is betting that the next differentiator is not just a better shot or a brighter roast, but a place where recovery, coffee and the rest of the day can all happen in the same room.