Visit Your Local Coffee Shop

Sometimes I write things out as a note to myself. I type this out as I sit in the Starbucks across the street from my apartment. It’s the closest thing to me, and I already had some money on my loyalty card. But I feel like we should be giving our local coffee shops a chance.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about as we get closer to Thanksgiving here in the States. A few years ago, when I still lived in Lincoln, I was out on my walk on Thanksgiving morning. The trail I was on goes behind a newer Starbucks location. As I got up to this location, I couldn’t help but notice there was a line around the joint… on Thanksgiving morning. This is a morning where most folks don’t have to work, which tells me they probably have time to make coffee at home. But instead, they were trotting out to the local Starbucks on the way to where they were going, potentially with the family in tow, and ordering $5 coffees and maybe more. It didn’t make sense to me.

I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a taco shop that also serves specialty coffees (it goes good with breakfast tacos) and told him about this situation. I’ll never forget him saying how heartbreaking that was. Here he was, a local and well-respected business owner, and folks were still choosing to go to the chain establishment.

I don’t have a lot of local coffee joints near me. There’s one if I really want to really stretch my legs, a little over a mile from me. They mostly serve coffee and also push boba tea. There’s another not much farther than where I sit now run by two Chilean immigrants, that looks really cozy every time I walk past it. They serve coffee and have a specialty in empanadas of all sorts, including a breakfast one.

Local coffee shops all have their own vibe. I sat with a friend in one a few months ago that was a little too cutesy for me. But for some, that might be their vibe. The coffee was good though. I do wish I had more places within walking distance. It’s honestly one of the attractive features of the Pacific Northwest for me. Seattle will give you 10 options in a half-mile radius sometimes. But I do feel like we should give these local joints a chance. They’re probably more likely to remember you if you frequent them enough. And they won’t feel like the same place every time, like basically every Starbucks in the country feels.

So, I’m challenging myself. I’m visiting the coffee and empanada joint soon. I’ll report back when I do.