(downed: soy latte, soy latte, shot, regular latte)
DETROIT — After getting out of the hotel at 3:30a PDT, spending the day with a film crew and a car, getting back nearly 12 hours later, I was bushed. So I awoke from a well earned sleeping fit with a hankering for some coffee. Why not hit up two or three spots and compare, me think-ied.
Caribou Coffee is a chain of “Up North” themed shops, with real timbers all over the place. It’s basically a Starbucks with a niche marketing plan…and the coffee may or may not actually be better. Who knows. Maybe they’re trying to make it look like the Pacific NW? And that leads me to some thoughts…
Ever since heading up to Seattle/Oregon, I’ve been amazed at what good PR/buzz/marketing the region has, when it reality it virtually identical to Michigan. Northern Michigan has all the same stuff…trees, artsie gay people running from persecution and lakes galore. It just seems that the location of Seattle et al makes people just kind of love it. But everyone pretty much thinks little or nothing of MIchigan. And perhaps that because our coffee kind of sucks.
That also got me wondering, given our climate…a cup of coffee makes a hell of a lot of sense. It’s warm, it kills the “dark” periods temporarily and it lets you brood with like-minded neighbors who also are looking for winter/rain/clouds/economics to change. Did Michigan ever stand a chance of becoming a coffee-brewing mecca? Maybe if just a couple of snobs would have grown up here? If a publisher is interested, I’d be happy to report this story into book form.
So I matched up a bunch of coffee purveyors on the classic Soy Latte test…
