Insomnia Cafe – The Inspiration for “Friends”

Oh, to be able to visit a coffee shop, order a steaming latte and sit in a secluded corner sipping away!  Hard to believe that is something unattainable right now.  These certainly are strange days we are living in.  When things do get back to normal, one spot I am itching to re-patronize is Insomnia Cafe, the Fairfax District eatery that served as the impetus for Friends.  I first learned about the place way back in 1995 via an interview with show co-creator Marta Kauffman that appeared in Friends: The Official Companion Book.  In it, she talked about driving by the Beverly Boulevard cafe, taking note of its unusual name and thinking it would make for an interesting setting for a series.  She and writing partner Kevin Crane penned the treatment for Friends (initially titled – you guessed it! – “Insomnia Cafe”) just a few days later.  When I moved to Los Angeles about five years after first reading that interview, I found myself sitting at a stoplight on Beverly directly in front of the locale and just about fell over!  I couldn’t believe I was in the same spot Kauffman was when she conceived of one of the most seminal shows in television history!  In the years that followed, I passed by the site numerous times and doing so always brought a huge smile to my face.  Somehow though, I never ventured inside.  It wasn’t until last September when my friend Owen emailed me this USA Today article, which stated that Friends set decorator Greg Grande also used Insomnia Cafe as the inspiration for the design of the series’ iconic Central Perk set, that the locale went straight to the top of my To-Stalk List!  And I headed right over there just a few days later.

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Insomnia Cafe was originally established in March 1992 at a small storefront located at 13718 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.  Founded by former nightclub promoter John Dunn, the late-night coffee shop, open until 3 a.m. on weekdays and 4 a.m. on weekends (hence the name), served up strongly caffeinated brew, but no cocktails.  Per a 1995 Los Angeles Times article, Dunn stopped using drugs and alcohol in 1989 and “wanted to create a place that conformed to his own lifestyle.”  The bohemian-style coffee bar, which the Times described as being “decorated with cast-off sofas” (sound familiar?), became an immediate hit.  It also drew quite a bit of ire from nearby homeowners who claimed the leagues of patrons frequenting the eatery made constant noise and wreaked havoc in their neighborhoods in the early morning hours.  Regardless, the cafe remained insanely popular and Dunn soon opened a sister site at 7286 Beverly Boulevard.

The Sherman Oaks location, which you can see photos of here, was where it was really at, though!  Artists, screenwriters, and teens would pack the place, venturing in for espresso, open mic nights, and live music.  The cafe also boasted legions of celebrity devotees.  Just a few of the well-knowns seen hanging out at the coffee bar include Robin Williams, Mel Gibson, Sharon Stone, O.J. Simpson, A.C. Cowlings, Dwight Yoakam, Jerry Seinfeld, Daryl Hannah, Bobcat Goldthwait, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Leonardo DiCaprio, members of the Smashing Pumpkins, and Beck (who performed on the open mic nights before he was famous).

Sadly, area homeowners eventually succeeded in their fight to close the place.  The Sherman Oaks Insomnia Cafe shut its doors in 1996.  The Beverly Boulevard site remained open, though, and is still going strong today!

It, too, has a very bohemian vibe – and serves up some great coffee!

Per the Original Insomnia Cafe Facebook page, the Sherman Oaks location was the spot that actually served as inspiration for both Kauffman and Grande.  A recent post on it states, “What is so funny and sad is the newer Insomnia Cafe we built in L.A., not the original one in Sherman Oaks, keeps claiming to be the inspiration for the TV show Friends.  But the truth will always be known – Sherman Oaks Insomnia Cafe was it!  The characters were based on the customers of the Sherman Oaks, California store.”  I had the pleasure of speaking with Dunn recently and he confirmed the info.  He also informed me that Kauffman and Crane actually wrote the seven-page treatment for the series at the Sherman Oaks site!

Kauffman, though, has repeatedly recounted first noticing the Insomnia Cafe moniker at the Beverly outpost.  In a 2010 interview she and Crane did for the Television Academy, she said, “We were driving along – I think it was Beverly Boulevard – and we saw a place called the Insomnia Cafe.  And I remember we were talking about how that would be a cool place to have as one of our main sets . . . we liked the idea of something being overcaffeinated.”

Writer Saul Austerlitz also starts off his book Generation Friends by saying, “One day in late 1993, a young television writer named Marta Kauffman was driving down Beverly Boulevard when she passed a funky coffee shop called Insomnia Cafe, located across the street from an orthodox synagogue.  Full of lumpy couches and garish chairs, strings of Christmas lights and towering bookshelves piled high with mismatched books, the place was a beacon calling to the artists and slackers of the Fairfax-La Brea area.  Something about Insomnia Cafe grabbed her attention, and she began to mull over an intriguing idea.   Could a comedy series set in a coffee shop appeal to viewers?  Kauffman and Crane had only recently moved to California from New York, and found that they missed their old crew of friends from Manhattan terribly.  They had spent all their spare time together, done everything together, served as a kind of surrogate family.  What if they put together a show about that?”  The rest, as they say, is history.

In an incredible twist, longtime Insomnia Cafe fan Greg Grande was hired as the series’ set decorator.  He loved the eatery’s funky, but comfortable vibe.  In Generation Friends, Austerlitz says, “He would stop in to grab some coffee at Insomnia Cafe and would be inspired anew each time by the fabulously quirky décor inside.  When it came time to dress the set of the new show’s coffee shop, Grande thought again of Insomnia Cafe and wanted to model the set’s look on what he remembered.”  As Grande told EW magazine in 2019, “The idea was to have it feel like it was kind of a living room, hang out space.  You know, not your typical generic coffee shop with the computers.  What did they used to call them back then?  Internet cafes?  So the vibe that Marta [Kauffman] and Kevin [Bright] and David Crane wanted was, let’s make this feel like it’s truly a comfortable, casual living room.  I had mentioned to them that there was a place in West Hollywood, — I still think it’s around — it was one of the first interesting coffee shops in L.A. called The Insomniac [sic] Café and that was kind of, in my world, the inspiration for eclectic, old, classic pieces of furniture.  Nothing really matched, but there was collectible artwork on the wall, so I took that and kind of drove that point in.  I made what I like to refer to as the seventh character on the show.”   (As I mentioned in this post, Central Perk’s design was also partially inspired by Arnold’s Turtle in New York.)

Amazingly, Central Perk is not the only television coffee shop modeled after the locale!  The Bold and the Beautiful’s Insomnia Cafe took not only design inspiration, but its name from the site!

And the eatery is also a filming location!

It is there that Kevin (Michael Rady) and Laura (Abby Wathen) first meet in the 2013 romcom Random Encounters, which also starred Meghan Markle.

Insomnia Cafe is also a central location on the series Love Is -.

Kramer (Michael Richards) visited the Sherman Oaks outpost in the Season 4 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Trip: Part 1,” which aired in 1992.  Only the exterior of the café appeared in the episode, though.

Interiors were shot on a studio-built set.

In 1995, when MTV started airing My So-Called Life reruns, the network filmed a bunch of promos at the Sherman Oaks site, which resulted in teens popping by in droves in the hopes of seeing Claire Danes in person, as recounted in this article.  Unfortunately, I could not find clips of those promos with which to make screen captures anywhere.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Insomnia Cafe, the inspiration for both the television series Friends and its Central Perk set, can be found at 7286 Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles’ Fairfax District.  The Sherman Oaks outpost of the coffee shop was formerly located at 13718 Ventura Boulevard.

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