Well isn’t this just the best of all worlds?
I woke this morning in San Diego, California, in a small hotel in the Gas Lamp quarter, and now I’m sitting at a sidewalk table outside a small cafe sipping iced organic Mexican coffee.
Vicky is here for a conference, so I’ve been left to myself the first half of the day. I wandered a bit, mostly just spending as much time as possible outside. April in San Diego is — how can I put it? — somewhat different from April in Seattle. A bit of a shock, really, to go from a hopeful 60-degree high to weather that hit the low 70s by 9:00 AM!
Pannikin Coffee Tea and Spices’ Blue Planet blend, like many Mexican coffees, is a bright, light coffee with a hint of cinnamon. As I type, the portable propane roaster beside me is busily torching to perfection some other artisinal bean, likely one I will enjoy tomorrow morning.
Pannikin is more than a coffee bar. In addition to selling brewed coffee and tea, there look to be about four dozen or more loose-leaf teas, and a range of whole-bean coffees suitable for any taste preference. In addition, the store stocks a wide variety of colorful south-of-the-border candies and knick-knacks, including a make-at-home Día de los Muertos candy skull mold.
Pannikin is a local chain that, by all accounts, strives for a unique experience in each of its locations. Certainly the ambiance of this G-street spot would be difficult to reproduce in any quantity, which leads me to suspect each store likely has some individuality to it.
This location, according to one staff member, has been in operation since 1977, making it only 6 years younger than the first Starbucks store. Clearly, the owners took a different path here. It is very different from Starbucks, and very much like those other Seattle greats, Zoka, Victrola, and Caffe Vita. With Starbucks, the size and layout of the stores is usually different, but the in-store experience is as similar from place to place as — dare I say it? — McDonald’s. While Zoka and Victrola have expanded only relatively recently to more than one location, Caffe Vita has been brewing at multiple sites for nearly a decade — in addition to their Seattle stores, there is a Vita at the old Dancing Goats location in Olympia (I admit, I do miss Dancing Goats).
Naturally, that leads me to another topic. When does an enterprise cease to be thought of as a “local” business and take on the dreaded “chain” designation?