In the last month or so, two new coffee shops have opened up on the upper Capital hill and Madison areas. These are Porchlight Coffee and Cafe Char. But now there is a third coffee shop that will be opening soon. This new, yet to be opened coffee shop will be called “15th Avenue Coffee and Tea”.
Porchlight Coffee is located up on 14th between Pike and Pine, right round the corner from Old School Frozen Custard. I have been there, but I haven’t had the coffee yet. They serve Herkimer coffee and I certainly I do plan on checking the place out.
Cafe Char is located on East Madison, just about on the corner of East Madison and 23rd Avenue. The serve beans from Caffe Vita. I have also been there, but just like Porchlight Coffee, I haven’t tried the coffee yet. I also plan on checking this place out shortly.
Now “15th Avenue Coffee and Tea” is going to be located on 15th Avenue where the old Starbucks coffee shop on 15th was located. And there is a good reason for this. Its not that the Starbucks coffee shop there went out of business and closed shop, rather, “15th Avenue Coffee and Tea” is actually a Starbucks store, but without any Starbucks branding at all. In other words, its Starbucks, but Starbucks doesn’t want you to know it’s Starbucks. I will talk at length about what I think about this strategy in my next blog post.
Now some may think that the Capital area has way to many coffee shops but I totally disagree. Though I think we have too many corporate coffee shops on Capital hill, on the other hand I don’t think we have enough independent coffee shops. What we need are coffee shops that are not only independent, but offer diversity of coffee roasters. I for one am tired of going to the different coffee shops and finding that they all serve beans from the same roasters….
