True story, I took it as a 100% certain sign that I should buy the house in walking distance to a Starbucks. I’m unabashedly basic. The vision in my head of walking out my front door and minutes away picking up the first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season? Locality and sugary coffee: two great tastes that taste great together. And fate saw fit to have the house pass inspection and we ended up buying it, and indeed I did make my PSL fantasy a reality in the Fall. And then, you know, 2020 happened. I got scared to go into the tiny, crowded location where people tended to be angry and under caffeinated even before plague times. And then . . . they closed that location. My dream was over.
These days that location is sitting unoccupied, and I spend time imagining what I wish would go in that location. Ideally another, more local perhaps coffee shop. Or maybe a hybrid business of coffee and crystals. Or coffee and massage. Or coffee and tarot? Everything’s better with coffee. . .
Anyway, it reminds me of my years in dance class, how we’d talk about the ideal studio space that would also have an adjoining coffee spot and massage options. You dance, you need energy and your muscles get sore. Wouldn’t that be great? Also from my Madison days I know that near campus there was a laundry + bar where you could drink and socialize while your clothes wash and dry. Amazing. Since moving to Detroit I’ve visited a tea shop + metaphysical bookstore + psychic reading establishment. It was energizing, and packed with calm, caffeinated, inspired people.
What would be your ideal hybrid business? Like chocolate & mint being magical together, I can imagine there are so many different flavors of hybrid business and I can only think of so many . . .
I don’t know that it’s a hybrid business, exactly, but back in my undergraduate days (almost 50 years ago!) my friends and I came up with Guy’s Nobel Bar, to be funded by my inevitable Nobel Prize(s), which would be prominently displayed above the cash register 🙂 It would be located in a to-be-determined college town (e.g., Cambridge, Madison, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Austin, …) and cater especially to grad students — we’d have discounts for folks working on their dissertations, for example. This was pre-Internet, so there were no Open Access plans or anything, but we’d pay for a bound copy of each thesis from our patrons. We’d serve good beer, wine, liquor, coffee, tea, and food — based on what I felt like cooking that day. There would be live acoustic music (my roommate was going to be our piano player). Sometimes we included a newstand/bookstore/record store component next door.
I love that focus on a very specific clientele that you understood so well! And bonus points for a location with an unending supply of customers. I would have loved to have had a spot like that when I was writing my thesis!