Plenty of seating, friendly and knowledgeable staff, great coffee with more than stump on hand, and wonderful regular customers (I'm a little biased on the last point).
The food selection is good, and must have been improved since 2008 as they now have sandwiches, quiche like hand pies, bagels and a fairly good selection of pastries. I have been to shops that had a better selection of pastries, but those are often places that are bakeries and pâtisserie first, coffee shops second.
They have free, fairly speedy wifi, and only on occasion does the router get a little janky and need a re-boot. Luckily they must have it placed somewhere up high or with a strong signal because you get fairly good reception throughout the whole building. If you are a freelancer etc. I'd give 7V high marks for working from home. Lots of wall sockets to re-charge your laptop, iphone, android and other gear. I would say over all it's also a good place to meet with clients given the ample seating and large tables. Slightly longer hours would be nice for working late or hanging out with co-workers and friends, but I guess people have to sleep and shouldn't be sipping coffee past 2am?!
I like that there are four sections to the place with four seating options. There are couches and a bar up front to sit at with lots of natural light. There are several large tables in the middle for larger parties. In the back, where you'll find a lot of freelancers are the small tables with a variety of light intensity to them. It also helps that there are two bathrooms with good accessibility to them (why do some coffee shops have only one- I have no idea).
Prices are average for this level of coffee and service for PDX IMHO. You can get a slightly cheaper cup somewhere, or a more expensive one with even more mystique brewed into it, but you'll have to travel outside this neighborhood to do it and get this level of quality. I rate their standard French press coffee at the same level as Albina Press- which is to say very good.
As with most small businesses they prefer cash over credit or debit for the obvious reason that they get dinged a sizable amount of money on each transaction. To remedy this you can always open a pre-paid tab/gift card with a larger amount if you plan on coming back frequently. Then you get your convenience and they don't get such a large lose on each sale.
The low ball ratings you see that give this place a one or a two make no sense to me. Are there even one star places in PDX to get coffee anymore? Even some of the convenience stores serve what would be "premium coffee" in many parts of the US. I didn't go to 7V until 2010, so I'm not sure but it looks like, based on the ratings, they've improved over the last several years.
**********mini rant******************************************************
For crying out loud: who are you people still hitting up starbucks here in PDX? I'm not a hipster, a coffee snob, nor rich, and find it absurd to pass up what are 3-4 good, local options for coffee that are probably located between your home and your nearest starbucks with comparable prices and better coffee just to get your pumpkin spice latte. My early investigations into who these dinosaurs of the 90's are has turned up disposable coffee lids with lipstick smeared on them, so I have my suspicions... read more