On Corporate Coffee

I was just chided by a customer for getting my morning brew from Peets.

"You work in an independent business, but you buy your coffee from Peets?" delivered in a scolding tone.

I spent a nanosecond considering a substantive response, then shrugged and said "they make the best lattes in town."

"Well, have you tried everyone else?"

"Yes I have, many, many times."


I'm in philosophical agreement with the young lady about the corporate takeover of every nook and cranny of American life, and my consuming is informed by this attitude. But I'd never presume to lecture a stranger on the subject, on the off chance they'd spent a fair amount of the last 20 years hanging out in every cafe ever opened downtown.

I met the Wife at the Coffee Merchant in the original location, before they got evicted and it turned into Uptown Espresso, and now Black Horse. I went to a poetry reading at that odd one next to the Palm, where Red Hot Pottery is now. I visited the subterranean cafe of The Earthling after their ill-fated (and eventually fatal) move across the street, and then visited Beau's Russia House and Tea Room in the same location (aside to the locals- has there ever been a more obvious money laundering operation in the history of the downtown?) I saw the place in the Network through several owners, ditto Rudolph's, although I haven't been since the name change. Hell, I went to Linnea's when Linnea was still doing it in the Norwood Bookshop and carting the dirty dishes back home with her in bus tubs.

That's not a bad off the cuff history of independent downtown cafes.

As you, dear readers, are anything but strangers, settle in while I mount the official Baxblog soapbox, battered and chipped from years of abuse, and deliver a lecture on why I was drinking Peets this morning.


One, they absolutely do make the best lattes in town.
Sorry, everybody else, but there it is.

Corporate chains are widely guilty of selling their customers an idea backed by very little substance- think of those fast food burger fantasias on the teevee, then contrast it with the reality of disgruntled minimum wage drones shoving a bag full of grayish 'burger' across the counter at you, or even more egregiously pretty much any beer commercial, where taking a swig of McPilsner instantly transforms you into an irresistible sexual Tyrannosaur with laser beam eyes and Gatling gun arms.

Sell holy hell out of the sizzle, provide the cheapest possible cut of gristly steak, PROFIT!

This is not the case with Peets. Their espresso drinks are generally about as good as you can find in America, and by far the best I can find locally. When the Corporate Devil actually delivers a better product than local competitors, why should I shun them? Execution is an area, one of the few, where corporations and locals are on equal footing.

Two, it's Sunday.
The little locally owned place next door, where I've bought roughly 99% of my coffee drinks over the last decade or so, isn't open on Sundays (plus longtime owner Christie recently retired and the people who took it over have no idea what they're doing, but that's another story for another update). The two closest alternatives are Black Horse (formerly Uptown Espresso) and....Peets. Black Horse burns their beans, which I guess some folk like (witness the wild success of Starbucks, who also burn their beans and where the owner of Uptown/Black Horse learned his coffee chops) but I can't abide the practice. Linnea's makes quality coffee drinks, but is several blocks further away and they serve breakfast on the weekends. I'm not willing to chance the walk only to find a line of waffle fiends snaking out the door. The joint down toward the mission, Kreutzberg*CA, is a great place to lounge and leech free wifi, but their coffee flatly sucks.

So, I'm left with Peets.
Which I'm good with, because they make the best lattes anyway. =P