Coffeehouse Christmas

“The world really is our coffeehouse.” Here’s where we meet, talk, discuss our businesses, share one another’s lives. It’s where, when you walk in the door, you will hear me call out, “Merry Christmas!” (or “Happy Hanukkah” or “Happy New Year” or many another seasonal greeting).

This year, 2008, has been chills and spills and thrills from the get-go. You should know: You have hung in there with me among all the bangs and blows of a bizarre 12 months. If it wasn’t a family death, it was a great big trade show or a trip to Denver or a hugeous hurricane.

If you’ve had the time, you’ve been able to track Richard-and-Barbara’s travels by the blog posts about coffeehouses: Plantation Coffee in Phoenix, Dalhart’s Superstar Coffee Company, Bastrop’s Coffee Dog. The road traveled has had quite a few caffeinated pauses (a seeming contradiction) along the way.

Despite everything…here we are again in December, at Christmastime. It’s amazing. You’re amazing. You’ve stuck with me through thick and thin this year, as colleagues and kin, friends and acquaintances.

I’m very grateful: My thanks for your business and support, love and kisses. ‘Tis the season to be merry and I hope you enjoy every vivid moment of it.

Also, please accept my best wishes for a fruitful year ahead. We will have many new things to confront together, some to be accepted, some to be overcome. All can be done at our nearby coffeehouse with a fresh cup of java or two or three. I’ll buy.

Merry/Happy all of these: Hanukkah begins 12/21 – the same day as Winter; Christmas Eve on 12/24 as usual. Kwanzaa starts 12/26, which is also Boxing Day (I always thought that was the day you cleared up all the thrashed Christmas wrappings). And “Festivus for the rest of us” added by Chuck Curtis. And "Merry Chrismakah, Hannumas" from Mark Lipschitz. Thank you to Prism Design, Inc., for the holiday coffee label design.

Vagrant Wireless

Or perhaps it's “wireless vagrant.” Any road, here I am trying out the free WiFi connection at the nearby Panera Bread store.

While a lot of people highlight Starbucks (and the coffee is good), I wanted somewhere less cramped, more relaxed for my first away-from-home-because-the-cable connection-is-cut outing. This is it, the Memorial City bakery-cafe. The joe is a fresh-made Guatemala Antigua, I had the basic egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwich, then plugged the laptop into the wall and fired it up.

A little work, a little more coffee. The soccer moms and accompanying players are stirring, just about the only ones. Did I mention that the Panera Bread wireless connection is free? Yep, it's free. Just sit down, open up your laptop and you're ready to go. Send an email as you munch a warm bagel. Read the news as you sip a latte. It's a nice alternative to the office, isn't it? Please relax, do what you need to do, and enjoy our WiFi. It's free all day long.

Says so right on the website. For a hotspot, it's pleasantly laid back. Just the thing for a disconnected hobo on a Sunday morning.

Dalhart Superstar

I arrived in Dalhart, TX, one day last week to find most of it blowing east toward Oklahoma. Not perhaps the most brilliant introduction to a Northwest Texas town best known as the center of the 1930s’ Dust Bowl. That’s sure easy to understand, though; the west wind is driving the topsoil across the road as far as the eye could see.

Since I was driving north of US 87 from Amarillo, there wasn’t much choice about where Barbara and I were headed and there wasn’t any mistake when we arrived: Another middle-of-the-hinterlands town that was not looking like a jewel this past week.

(You may recall news of a wide band of “killer” tornadoes stretching from that part of Texas all the way up to Minnesota.)

It’s something of a boom town again, with the price of oil so high and plenty of activity in the ‘patch. You can poke around here to find out more about the various area attractions, such as the XIT Ranch Museum, Palo Duro Canyon or the Veterans Park on 7th Street – not as pretty last week as this post’s photo.

Really, I did not see Dalhart at its best.

What I did see, as I guided the Prius north along the windy street, was a tiny little building on the corner of the highway and Peach Avenue called Superstar Coffee Company: As far as I could tell, the only place between Amarillo and maybe Trinidad, CO, where I could get a decent cup of fresh coffee.

No Starbucks but a good attempt in the back of beyond, Lisa Silacci and her family moved to the Dalhart area last year on other business and she decided to open this coffee shop to catch the traffic passing up and down US 87 (called “Railroad Street”) in front of the grain elevators.

She and her family are from the great Northwest where there’s a coffee shop on every corner and she says Dalhart needed one of these – it looks like she’s going to educate every rancher and oilfield hand on decent coffee one cup at a time.

I don’t know the whole story (and I didn’t have the camera as usual so there’s no photograph of the tiny drive-through outbuilding that Lisa and her husband Gary are using for Superstar). So I’m going to ask Lisa to send me a photo for another blog post a bit later on. I’m here to tell you, though, that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in that corner of US 87 and Peach – and by golly, she’s a member of the Dalhart Chamber of Commerce to prove it.

WOM: Next time you’re passing through Dalhart, “The XIT City,” stop off at the Superstar Coffee Company for a fresh cup of joe. Lisa’s got all the modern conveniences, flavors, even a buy-10-get-1-free card which she will initial for you instead of stamping or punching (Superstar isn’t that advanced yet).

There’ll be no inside seating for a while but you can drive yourself right up to the window and talk with Lisa her own self. And say hello for me. Just tell her I’m the guy passing through in the Prius. Okay?

Coffee Plantation

Before there was Starbucks in Phoenix, Arizona, there was Coffee Plantation. I met an elderly medico, Dr. Joe Kennedy of the VA, in the chain’s Biltmore Fashion Park store on East Camelback Road. “You used to come in, it would be crowded, and you’d hear every language on the planet!”

It’s still popular but to a visitor, it has the feel on an also-ran – Starbucks in the measuring stick now, the brand to which other coffee chains are compared. The fact of the matter is, Barbara and I were in Phoenix for family business, weren’t really out to enjoy ourselves – and could hardly find a good cup of coffee. (We stayed in the McDowell & 32nd Street area…not much around there.) First, anybody who thinks Dunkin’ Donuts is a challenge for Starbucks needs to drop into one or two of the DDs in Phoenix: Yuck. Second, even McDonalds coffee didn’t seem to have a good taste.

Yes – I’m a coffee snob. Then somebody told me about Coffee Plantation and I thought riding the brand would be worthwhile. I ought to be clear: the cup of “Ethiopian” coffee I had at Coffee Plantation was as good, as fresh and powerful as any African I’ve had. Thanks for that.

On the other hand, this isn’t a chain that goes (or has gone) out of its way to make itself more competitive, at least not based on my single visit. Because of the ubiquitous nature of Starbucks trade dress, this Coffee Plantation store looks similar, but a bit bigger. It offers a couple of computers and plenty of seating. There are fresh pastries available.

But there’s a real sense of has-been to the Coffee Plantation store. (As far as I can tell, the chain was once owned by Diedrich Coffee, but no longer – perhaps some managers bought it out?) No billboards I could find. No strong brand merchandizing, no back-story material. None of the customer involvement devices for which Starbucks is famous. Presuming I’ve even got the right website, Coffee Plantation is stuck in the last century electronically. There’s worse, and I’m not alone in perceiving it.

Take a look at the store reviews on Yelp.com. Scottsdale’s Christy L noted, “As I approached the counter the employees were bent over by the milk cooler, so engrossed in a conversation that they failed to notice my presence.” Thomas S of Phoenix chimed in, “Just because you have the word Plantation, implying old Southern American charm, in your name doesn't mean you can’t provide modern services like clean restrooms? Perhaps you could sweep the floor. And wipe down the counter. Oh, I know, maybe the pigeon poo could be scraped off the tables.”

The feeling of the store is cheap goods and cheap labor– the polar opposite of bustling, smiling Starbucks baristas. And yes again, this is based on a single visit.

Bad service drives out good customers. No matter how popular the chain was once upon a time, it seems as though Phoenix’s Coffee Plantation brand could use a double shot of espresso right about now.

Green(er) Cup

If, with three sentences on a slip of paper, I could help you turn your company just a little “greener,” would you be interested?

You can do it if you make insulated travel tumblers available to your employees and customers as one of your corporate ad specialties. The one in the photo above is a stainless steel model…but after all these years, there are literally hundreds of styles, all built on the same general principles: a hand-sized container with [a] double-wall vacuum insulation and [b] a firm-fitting, non-spill top or lid with [c] a slide opening.

Here are my three sentences (and see four spiffier options below):

Use this insulated mug next time you visit your favorite coffee shop or convenience store, instead of taking your beverage out in a disposal cup. And keep using it again and again: You could save your local landfill – and the environment – a lot of waste. Thanks from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

Think of this as the ad-specialty version of repurposing content if you like. Truth is, our environment could use a little help on the to-go cup front. Writing in the November 2007 issue of Fresh Cup, Lois Maffeo makes a couple of telling points.

First, the standard paper-and-plastic go cup is a key part of the retail coffee biz. You know it – everybody knows it. You only have to look around at how many people are carrying Starbucks go cups into meetings…and just about everywhere else.

Second, the “average American office worker’s annual consumption of 500 beverages in disposal cups” means that trash baskets, garbage trucks and landfills are overwhelmed with the things. These are objects made of paper or plastic (or both) that are put to use for an estimated 20-30 minutes. Maffeo says that the conventional go cup is one of America’s quickest paths to the waste stream: buy it, use it, throw it away. In half an hour tops.

One answer that’s being stirred (not shaken) by the cup industry…uh, the paper product manufacturers…is creating go cups with renewable resources, or post-consumer recycled content. And this is a good one, even if it means that retailers who offer compostable cups will pay two or three cents more per cup than for a paper cup. We’ll end up paying for that, but it’s worth it for the benefit.

The better, greener answer is the insulated travel cup or tumbler – the one that you’re likely already making available to customers and prospects. (And no, I am not being paid by the Advertising Specialty Institute for this post…no promotional fees for me, thank you. Although I am open to discuss…)

No one but you and I will know if you start putting a bit of paper inside each of your company’s promotional tumblers; and add a little extra environmental messaging to your corporate brand platform.

I asked some of my colleagues if they could make my own sentences sharper or wittier. They did. With thanks to each, here are their suggestions.

1. “I cut the word count by 37% but don’t think it’s any more provocative,” Graham Rust of Rust2 in Prague said. His option:

Use this insulated mug every time you visit your favorite coffee shop or convenience store (instead of taking yet another disposable cup) and you’ll cut local landfill, and help our environment. Thanks, from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

2. A different take from long-time Houston copywriter Bill Holicek goes like this:

Call me Max the Mug! Use me again and again at your coffee shop and carryout. You save our trees and landfills. And show eco-friendly clout.

3. From “New Jersey Jack” Goldenberg on the East Coast:

Adding waste to the environment? Stop! Littering Earth with disposable coffee cups? Stop! Start using this insulated mug ever time you drink a cup of Joe! From the Green Thinkers at XYZ Company.

4. The principal of Simply Communicate, Jamie Roark, sent this one:

Enjoy this insulated mug instead of a disposable cup each time you visit your favorite coffee spot. Know that every time you sip, the environment sighs. Thanks from the green-thinkers at XYZ Company.

However you say it, you can help save the planet – one cup of coffee at a time.

I owe the idea of this post to Bobbie Ireland and Fran LaGrone at Wood Group (who sent me the photo); and Maggie Seeliger at KBR. All of them, at various times, have given me one or more insulated travel tumblers with their corporate logos on them. I use these tumblers a lot…just the way I describe in this post. And thanks to everyone for participating.

Bean Price

“I hear you have a potent magic,” Shabaka finally said to the far older man in front of the hillside cave.

Shabaka was dark; the ancient darker still. By firelight, half their bodies were in shadow but their faces gleamed as they drank beer and made polite conversation. There was silence for a time. Then: “If I had such magic,” answered the old man, “would I reveal it to every traveler who passes by?”

Long before he was King of Nubia, Shabaka walked the length and breadth of Kush, from Abu Simbel to Meroe. He met many people and listened carefully to many tales, always enjoying a good one himself. “I just wondered if there was a story in it.”

“Well. A good story is a different matter. I do have a powerful magic,” the old man began. “I have it from my own travels across the Sunrise Sea, in a land where the men and women take small berries from trees.”

“A magic plant then?” asked Shabaka. “Not the plant, but the berries of the tree – the beans,” replied the oldster, turning his face away from the fire. “They are much stronger than this beer we have been drinking.”

“You have shared your beer with me,” replied Shabaka. “Will you share your magic?”

The old man sighed heavily. “It will take some time to prepare. Tell an old man a story and you will get your magic.”

So while the oldster puttered about in the cave, Shabaka told about the women of the Lower Nile and their strange ways (one woman in particular). As the man filled a pot with water and put it on the fire, Shabaka described the unsettling animal-headed gods of other lands.

Finally, the old man threw out Shabaka’s beer and filled the cup with a hot, dark brew. “It will at first seem bitter, but then you’ll know its magic,” he said. Shabaka sniffed the cup and a wonderful smell filled his senses. Before he took his first sip, he poured a tiny quantity on the ground – “For our own gods,” he said.

Then he drank. The liquid was bitter alright, but not unpleasant. Being young, though, he drank off the entire cup. The old man refilled it and Shabaka drank more. “I can feel it! I can kill a lion tonight – maybe two!”

“The bean gives power indeed,” cautioned the old man. “But it comes with a price, youngster. Two prices, really. Two curses.”

“What are the curses?” asked Shabaka, who could feel the effects of the brew in his fingers and his toes. His senses were suddenly sharper. “Have you poisoned me, a guest at your fire?”

“No, no – no poison, but there are curses nonetheless,” answered the man. “It is late. We should sleep now and soon you’ll see what I mean.”

The two men lay on the ground near the fire and closed their eyes to sleep. Shabaka turned on his side. Turned back the other way. Moved a small pebble from under his back. Rolled over on his belly, then on to his back again. The moon rose and set and still Shabaka could find no rest, no sleep. He sat up suddenly, realizing that he’d been restless and wakeful through the entire night. In the gray of dawn, he could see the old man resting on an elbow, staring at him across the dead fire.

“I didn’t sleep.” I found no rest,” Shabaka mumbled.

“That’s the first curse,” said the old man. “The beans rob men of their sleep. Come, we will find something to eat and welcome the new day. You’ll feel better with something besides my magic in your belly.”

As Shabaka groaned to his feet and tried to shake off the effects of a sleepless night, he asked. “That’s quite a price to pay, old man, to have my sleep so disturbed. Can the second curse be worse than the first?”

“Oh yes,” replied the oldster with a tiny smile. “In all your travels, have you ever heard of a cardiologist?”

“Coffee Cup II” by Mary Beth Zeitz, from Allposters.com. All rights reserved.