Arizona Coffee

Roast Magazine suggests you should do this… so the question is, have you?

I happened to walk into Echo Coffee this morning at the perfect moment to witness an interesting spectacle. The customer in front of me was really grumpy (and obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed), and ordered a few drinks — ala Starbucks. I didn’t hear the entire order, but she began with a Caramel Macchiato, followed by a coffee, and a soy latte.

My best guess is she was in charge of ordering drinks for the office that day, and stumbled into Echo Coffee since she couldn’t find a Starbucks.

The staff member at Echo Coffee handle the order perfectly… quickly explaining that he could make her a caramel latte — similar to how Starbucks makes them. He even explained that a traditional macchiato is a small drink made with espresso and marked with milk.

The customer wasn’t enthusiastic — didn’t smile, and actually looked offended that it wasn’t exactly the same.

Questions:

1. How often do people really order Starbucks drinks at other coffee shops?
2. Some shops in the valley would simply say ‘no’ to this sort of order… I can think of several shops that don’t even have flavors. But, on the flip side Echo Coffee just made $12 off of her order.
3. Is there a whole class of grumpy Starbucks customers who fear change?

Update: Above is a photo of my toddy + zucchini muffin from this morning.

Echo Coffee
2902 N 68th St.
#135
Scottsdale, AZ 85251

This guy talks fast. But, he’s got a great little video overview of coffee. And for what it’s worth, he has a bunch of other awesome videos, mostly about British history, but I found myself captivated.

Just ran across this video clip about Bergies Coffee Roast House on YouTube.

Bergies Coffee Roast House
309 North Gilbert Road
Gilbert, AZ 85234-5771
Phone: (480) 497-3913
Twitter: @BergiesCoffee

Tucson readers will be glad to know that they have a new shop they can visit. Caffe Luce has opened a second location at 4205 N Campbell.

Michael Foster from Caffe Luce wrote to let me know about it, and shared these photos:

Just wanted to let you know that Caffe Luce Coffee Roasting Co. is proud to announce the opening of our second Tucson location. The new Caffe Luce is located at N 4205 Campbell #125 (in the Trader Joes plaza at river/campbell) and is open daily from 6am-9pm. We will be offering coffee in all the usual formats; espresso, drip, aeropress, hario v60, toddy….etc, as well as over 19 fresh roasted varietals and blends.

Here’s a video from their other location.

Caffe Luce
‎4205 N Campbell
#125
Tucson, AZ 85719
(Trader Joe’s Plaza)

Back in April my wife and I, and another couple took a long weekend in Los Angeles and one of the places we visited, besides Disneyland, was Intelligentsia. They have several locations, but we visited the Venice Beach one, which opened 3 years ago.

My cappuccino, which is only served at this size (yay!)

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