Black Coffee Day by Todd Gehman
Just as I was scheming to write a glowing review of Java Jazz, they turned a corner toward the dark side. I was going to write about how, a few months ago, I altered the route I take to work in order to patronize this drive-thru coffee joint, even though it involves a longer drive with more stoplights and a drawbridge trap. I was going to write about how Java Jazz proved that the world would be better if, like this coffee stand, it was run entirely by women. I was going to write about their attention to the small things, how they nested a chocolate covered espresso bean into the dip in the cup’s lid and placed a cartoony adhesive tab over the lid’s opening to keep you from losing any coffee to your lap as you continued your commute. They started remembering my “tall black drip” refrain after only three or four visits.
There was no downside to the Java Jazz.
Yesterday they introduced new heat sleeves with – rather than plain brown cardboard or Java Jazz branding – full-color advertising. The current ad is part of some hiring campaign for Boeing. It says “STAYCONNECTED TO WHATYOUENJOY” and features two buddies standing on a Puget Sound vista at sunset, pointing to the remote-control helicopter they are maneuvering. Apparently, if I continue to follow the alternate route and stop in here, mornings will greet me with standard-issue gratuitous commercialism.
Moral of the Java Jazz: enjoy every cup of coffee as if tomorrow it’s going to be brought to you by The Man.
UPDATE: the owners found my entry via google and wrote earnestly to explain to me that the Boeing advertisement is a fluke, a free one-off, and that it’s only to last until the box is empty and they go back to the plain brown ones. If they care enough to respond to a dork who called them out once on the internet, they are clearly good people!
UPDATEDUPDATE: Erm…only a couple of weeks since they assured me that the Boeing recruiting thing was a fluke and that they’d bail on the adverts once that free box ran out, they handed me a cup wrapped in a Qwest cable/internet advertisement this morning. Apparently the ads are getting worse before they get better…or they’re just getting worse.
over 7 years ago
