Two more little coffee shops bite the dust
I’m sitting here in the mega-corporate coffee house with sadness in my heart. My intention was to be sitting in one of the small neighborhood coffee houses but alas it seems they are all going out of business. I happily shared about the Afresca Coffee shop almost a year ago and it was easily one of the most comfortable places to work for a few hours. The free WiFi was the bomb, too. I noticed a couple of months ago that they started closing very early in the day, especially on Sundays when more folks are out running around. The last two times I stopped by on weekends they were either getting ready to close early in the afternoon or they had in fact already done so. That spelled a warning to me and sure enough about a month ago the signs came down and the place went up for lease.
Just this past week I drove past the Cafe Soleil close to my house and was surprised to see the signs normally in the windows gone. It looked like there were people inside so I hoped they were just remodeling or something. Today the stark reality was unveiled as the big "Soleil" on the front of the shop has been removed and it looked like the place is closed. This is so sad as it’s the last little coffee house close to Mobile Tech Manor except for the big chains. I sure will miss their Vietnamese Grilled Pork sandwiches. I guess it’s hard for the little guys to compete against the big boys.
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Running a small coffee shop after retirement is a dream of me and my wife. Both of us love coffee, music, books, and wifi! We don’t really expect to make any money out of it, but it appears we’d rather save even more before opening one.
Mobile Tech Manor is pretty close to me. I’m just right down the road.
There is (was) a place on 2920@Kuykendahl called “The Coffee Guy”. It’s closed and guess what recently opened 1/4 mile down the road.
James,
I guess the irony is lost on you, of your blog post from YASB telling of the closing down of local coffee shops, when you’ve blogged from YASB dozens of times over the last year?
–woodstock
Woodstock, the irony is not lost, believe me. As I’ve watched this unfold I have given a lot of thought to this very thing. Why go more often to the SB and not the little shop? To me it comes down to familiarity. I can go into one of the two SB near me and instantly experience the “Cheers” affect, everybody knows my name and what my favorite drink is. I have even walked into my main SB and found my drink ready for me because they saw me drive up and park and got it ready for me.
The two little shops I mentioned never did that, even when I was going more frequently to them. I also found that in one of the shops the patronage was largely teenagers and it was not always a good working environment. That was the one that had no WiFi at all. The other one was the same way, sometimes I’d go in and there’d be no one there which was a bit odd at times.
In the SB shops I know there will almost always be other professionals working and it’s common that the regulars get to know one another and form new friendships. That’s probably part of the SB attraction, I think.
My husband meets with a group of friends every Saturday morning at a little local place. They do the crossword puzzle in the shop’s newspaper as a group activity. The regular worker get people’s drinks ready for them and hands them to them when they come in. The shop enthusiastically participated when the bunch decided to hold a chili cook off and bring the chili in to be judged in their shop. They don’t care when group members bring in a home made treat once in a while, and they often join in the conversation when they have a minute. I don’t think you get all that at the big boys’ places.
Sounds like you guys love your coffee houses the same way us brits love our pubs. The difference is that you guy’s can drive home afterwards and i must admit that not a lot of work ever gets done at the bar :D.
Give me the little coffee shop every time. The owner knows me and I know him and there’s far fewer (if any) of those pretentious d-bags sitting around sucking the life out of the place.
It’s interesting that you lament the loss of independent coffee shops. Sometme in the last year I remember reading about how the very best thing for an independent shop was to have a corporate shop move in next door. I can’t seem to find the link right now.
It makes me wonder if the problem for the particular independents that you mention goes back to the old adage: location, location, location.
The corporate places have departments of people that work on figuring out the best locations.
I’ve seen many small coffee shops close down in the wake of the new SBs that seem to be taking over the world. It makes me sad for many reasons and the truth is I never drink coffee in SB because I really hate SB coffee.
Unfortunately, many small coffee houses seem to think everyone likes the SB type of coffee so it’s getting harder and harder to find a decent cup of coffee anywhere. Eventually, the only place I’ll be able to get a fine cup of coffee is at home.