Woman goes to her ‘favorite’ coffee shop weekly to study for the MCAT. Then a barista kicks her out for not buying anything. So who was in the right?

A local coffee shop and one of its regulars are trading words on TikTok after the customer was allegedly kicked out for not buying anything. It’s not every day you see a small business and a customer openly beefing in 4K, and the drama is sparking a ton of discourse on all sides.

So how did we end up here? It all started with a viral video by Ja’Mya Williams, AKA Premed Williams (@unique.mw) on TikTok.

What happened at this coffee shop?

Williams tearily recounted an experience at her favorite coffee shop, Luana’s Coffee & Beer, that upset her. Her clip, uploaded on Jan. 11, earned over 20,000 views.

“Bro, I hate to be on the internet crying about some stuff, but why did I just get kicked out of my favorite coffee bar?” Williams asks the camera. “Because I didn’t make a purchase when … the bartender wanted me to make a purchase. Like, what?”

Williams begins offering context on her relationship to the shop, explaining that she is very much a regular.

“I go to Luana’s Coffee & Beer at least once a week to study, as I’m studying for the MCAT,” Williams says. “I meet up with a lot of my pre-med friends, my doctor friends, at this coffee bar. And every time we go, we always make a purchase. I always buy something.”

The night she recorded her video, Williams says she had gone into Luana’s and was trying to gear herself up to study, expressing that it’s something you have to “work up the courage” to do. While she was trying to get herself in the right headspace, the conflict began to unfold.

“I sat at the bar, and the bartender was like, ‘Can I get you anything?’” Williams recounts. And I was like, ‘No, no, thank you … I don’t need anything right now.’”

Williams says the bartender “proceeds to stare [her] down” and pressures her to make a purchase immediately.

The bartender tells her off

“‘Well, I expect if you’re gonna come in here and use our Wi-Fi, use our internet, use the space, that you’re gonna make a purchase,’” Williams says, allegedly quoting the bartender. “And I was like, ‘What?’ And then I got up and left. Like, you’re not gonna talk to me that way, period.”

Williams then shows the camera her lengthy purchase history at Luana’s to illustrate just how often she’s gone and given the shop her money. She later shows a positive review she had recently left Luana’s. Williams then expresses frustration that whenever she goes in to study, she generally doesn’t order right away.

“I’ll make a purchase when I’m ready to, like I always do,” Williams says. “I always start with water, then get a little bit of coffee or get a snack. Like … it’s a coffee bar. Like, people are here studying.”

Determined to “lock in” and study as she intended, Williams goes back into the shop, takes a seat, and asks for some water. A different bartender, whom she’s seen “more often,” repeats the policy that she must make a purchase.

Is it a new policy?

“‘Where is this policy posted?’” Williams asks, recounting her question to the bartender. “They’re like, ‘Oh, we just need to let everybody know.’ I’m like, ‘OK, that’s fine. I come in here all the time. I make purchases all the time.’ Then he goes, ‘Would you?’ Responded with an attitude.’

Williams says she attempted to explain the bizarre interaction with the previous bartender, to no avail. She expresses bafflement at the apparently aggressive treatment she was receiving.

“Y’all are a small business, and I’m here to support you, but that is not how you do it,” Williams says. “As somebody who works in customer service, that is not what you do and how you treat people … It’s the fact that I’m coming in as a Black woman sitting at the bar, trying to try to do some work like everybody else in here, and you’re trying to hold me?”

After the viral video

Soon after Williams posted her video, she posted a follow-up video reiterating that she felt “ganged up” on by the bartenders and that she was accused of being “disrespectful.”

In this follow-up, she emphasizes that the main “argument” being made by the baristas is that she needs to leave because she’s not a paying customer. In answer to that, Williams shares with us recorded audio of her going around and talking to other customers in the shop, multiple of whom say they haven’t made a purchase or even been asked to make one.

But the saga doesn’t end there—because Luana’s Coffee got on their TikTok account and responded.

Luana’s Coffee defends itself

Aaron Schofield, the owner of Luana’s Coffee & Beer, recorded a response video to Williams’ original video. The 14-minute response, posted on Jan. 12, has accumulated over 32,000 views. In the video’s caption, Schofield alleged that Williams “has had about seven of her friends [write] one-star reviews about our coffee shop.” As of the writing of this article, reviews of this nature are not visible among Luana’s Google reviews. Google has a robust system for responding to review bombing.

Schofield begins his video expressing frustration that he feels he has to make a video about this situation, but he also expresses hope that both he and Williams “could both learn from this moment.”

Schofield emphasizes that it is extremely “normal practice for somebody to have to purchase something.”

“It’s a common thing that happens at Luana’s,” Schofield says. “People will come in and they’ll set up shop, and they’ll hang out, and they don’t buy anything, and they use the Wi-Fi, they use the bathroom, and they don’t get anything. And, like, we don’t have a lot of space for that … You have to help pay for the bills. It is what it is.”

He addresses Williams

Schofield says Williams’ response to the request for purchase was “kind of aggressive” and “kind of odd,” and that Luana’s employees found the whole thing “awkward.” He says when Williams exited and then reentered the shop, asking the employees to give her water, it almost felt like a “power trip” over the employees. 

“We’re talking about two employees that have to deal with this all the time,” Schofield says. “It’s frustrating. They make their money on tips, guys. That’s how … this industry lives and pays their bills. And what resulted next is another level of, like, OK, now you’re the problem.”

Schofield says the employees had to draw a line when Williams began walking around and asking other customers questions, as evidenced by her recorded audio.

“She turned around and walked, proceeded to walk up to people who are on dates, who are studying on their own, who are there with their families, and started asking the different tables, ‘When you walked in … were you told to purchase something when you walked in?’” Schofield recounts. ‘“Did you have to buy some right away?’ … She went to multiple tables and did this.”

He continues, “So then one of the employees goes up there and says, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry, you gotta go.’”

Schofield says that’s when the deluge began

“She went home and made this TikTok … changed her Yelp review about us, changed her name, took her picture off, and then wrote an absolutely, just blunt, mean review about us,” Schofield says. “And also kind of seems like she kind of enlisted her friends to kind of guerilla market like this on TikTok with her, because now I’m getting hit up with a bunch of people saying, like, you know, just mean stuff to us, and that sucks.”

Schofield says she messaged him on his personal profile and that he apologized in response, but that she then proceeded to demand a refund for all the money she’d spent at Luana’s since October 2025.

“And that seemed a little sad, not ethical, I would say,” Schofield says. “I don’t know why we would return that money … If you had bought something that night and you and you had to leave early, I would have for sure refunded you … I told her, like, ‘It’s not possible for us to return all of the money you’ve ever spent at Luana’s … I even extended a gift card.”

Schofield expresses sadness at how things went down and says this was “a learning moment” and “a sad moment” for “both parties.”

He addresses the customers

“I want to say something to the customer from last night directly,” Schofield says as he finishes the video. He says he supports the customers and wants them to succeed, but that they “just wanna be able to make sure that we are able to pay our bills so we can do that not just for you, but for hundreds of people throughout the years.”

He continues, “And I’m not mad at you. And I hope that you maybe can see the other side of this from our perspective maybe a little bit more and just take our apology ‘cause this is an apology to you that this moment happened.”

After more personalized well-wishes for Williams and an assurance that the incident was in no way related to race (Schofield self-identifies as “Hispanic-Hawaiian”), the video ends.

And Williams responded one last time.

The third act of Luana’s and Williams

Williams posted another video on Jan. 13, acknowledging Schofield’s apologies but still demanding the refund for all the money she’s spent at Luana’s.

She denies recruiting friends and family to review bomb Luana’s. She says it’s illegal to deny someone water in the state of Arizona (which is untrue and a widely-believed myth), and maintains one of the bartenders “started instigating.”

In an email to The Mary Sue, Schofield said Luana’s is “pretty sad about the way that all played out.”

“We tried our hardest to reason with the customer,” Schofield wrote. “But in the end, we realized we weren’t going to be able to reach her demands. Especially after so much damage had been done to our business online. With an onslaught of negative reviews (that weren’t technically real) posted to our Google page. It didn’t make sense for us to spend anymore time trying to reason with the customer.”

‘Take a pause’

Schofield said he believes “both parties needed to take a pause and understand each other that night.”

“Our bartender didn’t technically say anything wrong but she also should’ve just let it be,” Schofield wrote. “At least for a few more minutes then maybe tried again, and the customer needed to understand our bartenders are at times under a lot of stress and are just trying to make the most amount of money possible on their shifts. So when someone says they’re not ordering anything, that’s going to frustrate them. We’ve since had multiple conversations with the staff on hand that night. Reminding them to be patient and give things time to play out.”

Schofield told The Mary Sue this situation has been “very hard on [him] mentally” and that he “really just [wants] to move on from this,” as “in the last couple days people have said some very hurtful things” to him. 

The Mary Sue has also reached out to Williams via email to request additional comment.

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