Netflix Brings Luke's Diner to Austin

If you walk into your favorite cafe Wednesday morning and find yourself transported to small-town Connecticut, don’t panic! Your coffee shop has only caught a temporary case of Gilmore fever (surly proprietor not included), and will be back to normal soon.

This one-day transformation comes courtesy of Netflix, who are turning four Austin cafes – Vintage Heart Coffee, Summer Moon Coffee Bar, and the Caffe Medici locations in the Austonian and at 800 Congress – as well as many more in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and across the country, into Luke’s Diner, the preferred hangout spot for the titular Gilmore girls. The pop-up event on October 5 marks the 16th anniversary of the series’ original television debut, and is also being used by Netflix to promote their upcoming Gilmore revival, a four-part miniseries set to be released on November 25.

The original series, which ran from 2000 to 2007, followed the lives of single mother Lorelai and her teen daughter Rory in the fictional idyll of Stars Hollow, where the two found love (and lost it, and found it, and lost it), clashed with Lorelai’s upper-upper-class parents, and talked very, very fast. It’s this cozy, small-town atmosphere that Netflix is trying to re-create with their Luke’s Diner pop-ups. Or maybe it’s the talking fast part, since all four locations will be giving away a free cup of coffee to patrons from 7am until noon. There will also be digital swag distributed via snap codes printed on the cups, for those of you occupying the space where the Venn diagrams of social media fiend and Gilmore fanatic overlap. Just be sure not to expect small-town crowds if you decide to take a stroll down to Luke’s.

UPDATE: This article has been amended since its initial publication to correctly describe the Austonian as a condo building and not a hotel.