Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a couple small coffee shops in the North Austin area. These two shops could not have been more different from each other but at the same time there were many similarities too.
Wha?
Okay, I'll explain. Shop No. 1, called Sorrento's, now around for 4 years, lives in a tiny old photolab building situated in the middle of some parking lot. Remember when people would take pictures with very large obtrusive cameras and then trudge their film (oh, dear god, actual film!!) to one of these places, where you'd have to leave it behind and come back another day to get it back and finally see what crappy pictures you took? It was slightly remodeled, and by slightly I mean heavily, but remained a drive-up type shop. We figured this out when we decided to park our car nearby the building and walk up to the doorway on that side, then open the door and then attempt to walk right into the place. Attempt. That is until the girl working in there nearly maced us for walking in and scaring the bejeezus out of all the people inside. There's a reason the other cars were driving up to the other side of the building. Okay, okay. We just wanna talk and ask a couple questions, darlin'. Turns out the owner, Kelly, was there and she was gracious enough, once she recovered from the initial scare, to induldge our questions about the place and how it came to be, etc. Recommends a super-automatic, for example, for this type of setup because of the speed and consistency. Recommends a smaller ice machine since they're not in the business of selling bags of ice and that the extra heat generated by her large machine is enough to warm up Greenland. Recommends checking with the city to determine traffic patterns to pick out the best location for a new shop. But the most important bit of info was when we asked if she would do it again: YES!
Phew, long paragraph. How about a coffee break?
Now on to Shop No. 2. This one's called Genuine Joe's Coffeehouse. We did not get maced walking into this place. In fact, I don't even think they have a drive-thru window so even if you're in a hurry, you'll still have to park your car. No, this place was much more loungey. Sofas and bistro tables arranged around a few rooms, with a homey feel, if your home was a typical eclectic Austin co-op housing. But hey, we're not judging. It was clean, and there were plenty of peeps working away. Some alone, others were having surreptitious meetings about this or that. The bar itself was manned by the two owners, Dave and Victor, and they were just as forthcoming with details on their baby as Kelly over at the other shop was. In fact, it's an apparent trend I'm finding that the owners of non-corporate shops tend to want to promote this style of set up, that is, building a deeper coffee culture based on personal interaction and higher quality than the "big dogs" could offer. GJ's was also around 4 years old and guess what? Dave and Victor both agreed that they would do this again if they had to start over.
Hmm. What's the moral of the story? Well, who really cares, but I'm just going to say that no matter what the format of the store is, whether it's a quick-n-speedy drive-thru, or a relaxed and quiet lounge setting, the point is that you enjoy making the product. You enjoy the lifestyle. You enjoy the type of interaction. You enjoy being independent.
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