Local coffee bar remains, providing personality downtown
Checker Records' business booms as competition temporarily dwindles
Cody Ewers
Issue date: 12/4/08 Section: News
|
Freshman Katie Beyer pauses for a moment to reacquaint herself with the familiar smell of incense and coffee grounds before shuffling past the rows of star-shaped neon signs, which try to attract her attention long enough for an out-of-character purchase.
"I usually just get coffee here," Beyer says, as owner John Spiteri prepares her beverage. "Maybe someday I'll get something else but for now I'll just get my iced vanilla latte."
The Gathering coffee shop closed on Nov. 1, and a new coffee shop, Jilly Beans, moved into its old building and opened its doors this Monday. For the entire month of November, Checker Records was the only coffee shop in the city.
The Spiteris parked a car next to the former Gathering building and taped a sign in the car's back window, coaxing former Gather patrons one block further for a 25-cent discount at Checker Records. Perhaps the advertising contributed to the recent spike in coffee sales Spiteri reports.
He said his store specializes in frozen drinks, though it also brews seven different flavors of coffee everyday.
He named all of his 14 specialty drinks after famous rock stars and their songs.
"[My wife and I] put a twist on our drink creations with a rock 'n' roll aspect," he said, sheepishly smiling through his long black hair, reminiscent of a metal rocker. "One day we just bought a book and started flipping through it, trying out different recipes and naming them according to their respective artists. It was a very wired process."
Checker Records is also home to what Spiteri calls the Mountain Dew of coffee, Stewarts Red Eye "Serious Brew Coffee."
Legend has it that Stewarts first designed this 100 percent Arcaic bean coffee to keep fighter pilots awake during missions in World War II, Spiteri said. Regardless, it contains enough caffeine to motivate Hillsdale College's entire campus during exam week without the extreme bitterness that's common in similar products, Spiteri said.
Be the first to comment on this story