Cafe owner finds crate outside shop—then sees what’s inside
- A Portland café owner, Jon of Salsman Coffee Roasters, discovered a mysterious crate filled with loose cannabis left outside his shop one morning.
- Unsure of what to do, Jon called the police non-emergency line; later, a man unexpectedly took the crate claiming not to worry about the authorities and dropped the cannabis nearby.
- The following day, the man reportedly dumped the contents at a transit stop and played with the cannabis with a friend, according to a regular customer.
- Jon shared the story and a photo on Reddit, where it went viral with tens of thousands of upvotes and comments, sparking local amusement and speculation about the crate's origin.
A Portland café owner was left stunned after discovering a mysterious crate sitting outside his shop.
Owner Jon, of Salsman Coffee Roasters, told Newsweek that he first noticed the crate early in the morning while opening up for the day.
“I looked out the front door and saw just the crate sitting on the table,” he said. “I couldn't see inside from my angle, so I told myself that I would deal with it after opening the shop.”
Once he had a closer look, he discovered that the crate was filled with loose cannabis.
“I was speechless,” Jon said. “I don't smoke or anything so I wasn't interested in it for myself. Plus, it was mystery weed so I didn't trust it.”
Uncertain of what to do next, Jon debated whether he could simply throw it away or if authorities needed to be notified. He ultimately chose to call the police non‑emergency line “just in case.”
As for how the crate ended up there, Jon said it remains a complete mystery. The only identifying mark on the container was a label reading “butternut squash.” While the building has security cameras, none captured footage of anyone leaving it behind.
Jon said the shop is brand new and he has no staff yet, so it was patrons who reacted first—snapping photos, laughing and joking that “of course it would happen in Portland.”
The saga took an even stranger turn later that same day. While Jon was waiting for officers to arrive, a man walked past, picked up the crate and left with it.
“I told him the police were coming for it, but he just said, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” Jon said. The man left behind what he described as a small trail of weed as he walked away.
According to a regular customer, the story didn’t end there. The following day, Jon was told the man took the crate to a nearby transit stop, dumped the contents onto the sidewalk and began tossing it around with a friend.
Jon shared the unusual discovery in a post on Reddit’s r/mildlyinteresting subreddit under the handle u/PersianFury, including a photo of the black plastic crate resting on a wooden table outside the shop.
It went viral, clocking up 46,000 upvotes and more than 2,000 comments.
“As a fellow Portlander, this does not surprise or upset me,” one user wrote. “In fact, a weed snowball makes me smile a bit. I don’t even partake.”
“Yea this definitely clocks for Portland,” another agreed.
Some guessed the crate contained cannabis trimmings or rejected buds from a large harvest—possibly leftovers a grower didn’t bother turning into hash or extracts.
Jon never expected the Reddit post to blow up the way it did. “I figured it would get a little bit because it was a funny story, but it very quickly became a thing of its own,” he said. “I even started seeing new posts referencing it in other places which really blew my mind.”