A new SF cafe, Grind and Unwind, used AI-generated images on a window menu sign and got two things back: online ridicule and a can of spray paint.

When Lyndsey Lozano put a temporary sign in the window of her new Haight Street cafe, Grind and Unwind, she used AI to generate the food-and-drink images. The logic was practical: the cafe had opened a couple of months earlier, the Haight draws tourists, and professional food photography costs money. The neighborhood had other thoughts.

Within days, the display drew online ridicule. A Reddit post captioned "Yum, slop" collected more than 670 upvotes, per SFGate. Someone then spray-painted the word "seriously" on the storefront. Lozano told NBC Bay Area's Jocelyn Moran, in a report published July 20, that the reaction caught her off guard. "A lot of people were like 'If that's what your food looks like, I don't want to eat there,'" she said. "Other people were like 'Is that really how much effort you put into your business?'"

By early July the sign was gone. Lozano told SFGate she's replaced it with LED lights and an actual pastry case facing the window. "Honestly, we just kinda wanna move forward and forget about the sign," she said.

Grind and Unwind registered with the city on December 23, 2025, per San Francisco Treasurer & Tax Collector records (account #1177551). The address on file is 1790 Haight Street; SFGate reported the location as 783 Haight — the discrepancy is unresolved in public records. Lozano's husband is identified as co-owner in press coverage but does not appear in city filings.

Whether the bad reviews tied to the incident leave a lasting mark on the cafe's ratings profile remains unverified. No Yelp or Google review data specifically timestamped to the AI-menu episode has been independently confirmed.