Last week, I had the single best neighborhood cafe experience of my life. Amazing service. Gorgeous interior. Spotless. Plenty of unhidden power outlets. A luxurious back patio. Reasonable prices.

Axis Cafe in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco seemed too perfect. Like how an urban cafe might feel in an over-the-top daytime soap opera. Later, I found out that Axis Cafe was affiliated with re{NEW}, a ministry of Christian City Church San Francisco. 100% of the cafe’s profits support the Axis Community Project (ACP), which sponsors programs for the families of Potrero Hill.

My favorite high school teacher preached: “show, don’t tell.” Axis Cafe does a great job of this – I couldn’t find any mention of the relationship at the cafe and I was never approached about anything related to the church, but the entire experience reflects very well on the people in charge.

It’s similar to what Jackson Fish Market is doing with their suite of small web applications. Each of their applications is sponsored by a single brand, but the brand isn’t force-fed to you. It’s joining you on the experience. The well-executed web apps reflect highly on the brands that fund the web sites.

Advertisements on many popular web sites seem to shout “hey, look at me”. It’s to everyone’s advantage to see less invasive forms of advertising work.

BTW, If you are in Atlanta and looking for something similar, I’d suggest Octane. It’s a frequent work location for Charles.