Woods Coffee Barkley

Barkley is where the chain experiments. It was the first Woods with booths, the first with cold brew on tap, and it carries a free upstairs meeting room the company calls the Greenhouse, seating roughly eight. For anyone who needs somewhere to hold an actual meeting in Bellingham without renting space, that room is a specific and unusual answer.

It also has more building to work with than the format usually allows. Two floors and more corners than a Woods normally offers, which changes what the store is good for: this is the one you can settle into with a laptop or a group rather than passing through.

Position helps. It sits in Barkley Village next to the Regal cinema, so it works as a before or after stop rather than a destination in itself, and there is parking without the metered hunt that downtown Holly Street demands on a Saturday morning.

Behind all six stores is the same Whatcom County family company, started by Wes and Diane Herman in Lynden in 2002 from a homeschool business plan and still family run at about two dozen locations, roasting its own coffee and baking its own pastries. Barkley is the one to choose when what you need is a table and an hour.