Winnetka Heights resident combines his love for horror and caffeine with Deep Cuts Coffee

Adam Johnson watches as a group of preppy downtown Dallas coworkers approaches his coffee shop. Just before the door, a woman takes a startled step backwards, her eyes wide. 

Her friends begin to laugh as she shakes her head and insists that she won’t be able to go inside. She asks if they’ll order for her, then retreats around the corner out of the eyesight of the Chucky doll that sits on prominent display on the coffee shop’s counter.

“He isn’t real,” Johnson thinks to himself, amused by the reaction.

Typically, the horror movie-themed cafe inspires more awe than terror in patrons, he says. Still, he’s sympathetic to the near-universal experience of watching slasher flick Child’s Play at too young an age and being traumatized for life by the franchise’s doll-sized serial killing star.

Johnson, a Winnetka Heights resident, launched Deep Cuts Coffee in 2024. The shop is nestled in the Downtown Dallas sky bridge at Pacific Place, and a hodgepodge of adjoining residential buildings, hotels and business towers contribute to a steady stream of customers. Plenty of horror-obsessed individuals make their way to the shop, too, drawn in by the novelty of zombie-themed roasts, drink names that reference David Lynch characters and Johnson’s personal collection of posters, T-shirts, VHS tapes, comics and figurines that decorate the store.

“We get to be a bit more creative,” Johnson says. “It’s a good way to stand out. There’s not many horror-themed businesses in Dallas, much less (horror-themed) coffee shops. … The coffee community is great, the horror community is great, so we smashed those two things together.”

Johnson’s appreciation for coffee goes deep. He manned barista counters across Dallas for 15 years before opening Deep Cuts, training at shops like Houndstooth and Cultivar. The job was a natural fit for him; he’s repelled by the corporate life, but eventually, he realized that “there’s not a lot of (upward) mobility as a barista.” So he dreamed of opening his own shop.

Then, one day in 2024, Johnson’s wife, Jami, was walking through the skybridge attached to her Downtown job when she saw that the resident coffee shop was closing down. Johnson jumped at the chance to take over the space, and Deep Cuts Coffee was born.

Deep Cuts’ beans are roasted by Cultivar, the East Dallas coffee shop whose Oak Cliff location Johnson manned before it shuttered during the pandemic. The roasts, like everything else, are on theme, with names like “Wake the Dead” and “Dead Tired.” Johnson says there are plans for Cultivar to begin roasting a Deep Cuts-exclusive cold brew for the shop, too.

The shaken brown sugar espresso, Dead Tired ($6.85), is the most popular item on the menu, but Johnson’s pride and joy is a drink called the Laura Palmer ($5.50). The cold brew and lemonade concoction tends to “freak people out,” but the beverage is “all about balance,” Johnson says.

The drink’s name is a double pun. While it pays homage to the tea and lemonade blend known as an Arnold Palmer, Johnson swapped out the first name to instead pay respects to the murdered small-town high school student whose death initiates the plot of the supernatural television series Twin Peaks.

“That’s one of the ones (that people see) and they say, ‘Oh, I get that! I know what that is,’” Johnson says.

Other signatures include the Monster Blood ($6.65) — an iced matcha suspiciously drizzled with strawberry puree — and the lavender honey latte dubbed The May Queen (starts at $6.35).

While Deep Cuts Coffee observes a year-round spooky season, Halloween naturally lends itself to the shop’s vibe. Johnson unrolls a whole other menu of especially daring beverages for the holiday. The Witches Brew latte ($6.50-$7.50) is spiced with cayenne, while the Harvest Spice chai latte ($6.50-$7.50) is made with a housemade pumpkin syrup.

Customer enthusiasm tends to spike in the weeks leading up to Halloween, Johnson says, and the holiday signals the shop’s “busy season.”

Johnson attempts to further spookify the already heavily decorated shop for Halloween. (At home, he goes “all out” for the trick-or-treaters.) Last year, the shop sponsored a pop-up at Joe Bob’s Halloween Spooktacular at the Texas Theatre, and Johnson hopes to repeat the party again this year.

In an ideal world, Johnson hopes to one day expand the shop to Oak Cliff. While he only moved to Winnetka Heights a year ago, he’s positive that it’s “the best neighborhood in Dallas.”

Merging two of his passions together worked out before — why not add a third good thing to the mix?

“I love being able to drink as much coffee as I want to,” Johnson says. “I’m just a nerd about this stuff in general.”

Deep Cuts Coffee, 1910 Pacific Ave., Unit 2060, FL 2, 214.484.6098