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| - The coffee is fine, but the CHE (coffeehouse experience) is just not there. If you are looking for great coffee, this place *is* better than Starbucks. For example, Small Town Coffeehouse knows what a café au lait is -- Starbucks does not, so I have to say "coffee with steamed milk please" which ruins the mystique. ;-)
However, if you are looking for a coffeehouse experience, a friendly hangout, then you'd be better off elsewhere, even "going corporate" at Starbucks (at least compared to this storefront across from Zipps on 59th Avenue.)
The signs outside the door about restrooms are for customers only and no outside food or beverages say it all: They just don't get it. If you offer a comfortable place that people can come to, all the time, to hang out or read a book or talk to friends, then those people will buy coffee when they want coffee, and they will bring friends too, adding to the customer-base. They will have business meetings on the sofa, bringing in more potential customers as well. If they are pushed away however when they just want to hang out, take a phone call, or surf the web on their laptop, then they will go somewhere comfortable. Starbucks at least "gets it" -- I just wish that I liked their coffee!
My "talk to friends" statement is pun-intended FYI. Remember the *show* Friends? They hung out at a coffee shop, but only a couple of them were drinking coffee at any given time. No soup Nazi at that coffee shop for sure, that's another show! :-D
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