Tag Archive for ‘Pittsburgh’ at 21st Street Coffee and Tea

Tag Archive for 'Pittsburgh'

AP: Pittsburgh’s Market Area Tickles Visitors’ Senses

Published

on August 26, 2008

. 1 Comment

More press…

I think the original title of this article was probably something like “Strip Tickles Vistors’ Senses” but this article, featured in the Tribune Review a few weeks back, has now been picked up by ABC News and Yahoo News, among many other news outlets. It’s great press for Pittsburgh’s “Market Area”.

There are a couple of photos online (we’re in three of them) as well that did not accompany the article the first go around- including this nice one of Alexis and I hard at work.

Also mentioned in the article was the ‘Burgh Bits and Bites Food Tour, which we are now proud to be a part of. The whirlwind 21st Street portion of the tour includes:

a high level discussion of fair trade and direct trade
tasty coffees sampled off our Clover (currently sampling Kenya)
a latte art demo and some coffee Q&A (if time/customer traffic permits)
finally the tour concludes in our loft area where Sylvia tells visitors about the historic Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction & Sales Building and the beautiful St. Stanislaus Church. Two buildings we look at every day.

To learn more about the Strip- click on over to Neighbors in the Strip daht cahm.

Trendy, but never gritty

Published

Luke

on August 4, 2008

in Coffee

. 2 Comments

Nice writeup by The Associated Press today on the Strip District, it’s history, and how the “Trendy, gritty wed…” in the former “shantytown”. Please read the article, then continue reading this post…

Ok done reading? Good…

One thing I want to clarify is my “bragging” about Starbucks and Panera closing in the Strip. Both businesses had closed before we were open for business. I don’t know the reasons why either closed, but it certainly was interesting to learn this did happen. Everyone has their theories, but I can’t say that it would be a good thing for an area struggling for a fresh start to have successful, large companies leaving the area. Does the mayor “brag” when a major corporation moves it’s headquarters to New York? Yeah no. What does that statement have anything to do with why the Strip is so great? Isn’t that what the article was about- all that trend and grit and whatnot? Well, it’s what happens when something is taken out of context… months later.

We had been interviewed by an AP reporter back in April. She was working on a story about how some shops survive in a Walmart world. The Strip is a natural place to focus, seeing how there are numerous examples of successful independent businesses. Just how do the “little guys” do it? The reporter put the question to me several different ways, but it basically boiled down to: given the ubiquitous nature of Starbucks and other big chains, how does a small company such as ours stay afloat in today’s economy?

My response was that we do not try to compete with chains, just as an independent fine dining establishment does not compete with your local burger chain. I explained that if we tried to “compete” with the big chains we would lose every time. By this I mean if we were to do everything as Starbucks does- from the menu and the ambiance to the taste of the drinks themselves… I don’t think we’d stay in business very long. I would not expect customers to come out of their way to seek out an independent business offering the same product that could be had in nearly any corner of our country. People generally aren’t going to show up at your door with bags of money because you’re a nice person and/or they feel bad for you and/or they’d rather “give their business to the local guy/gal” and/or they want to support the community. I explained that’s a bunch of BS.

For us to survive, I explained, we can’t just “compete”… we have to do FAR better. We have to offer a far superior product at a competitive price to the chains while paying much higher costs for said product, while investing an enormous amount of time and energy into training our staff, and then working that business model day after day and improve every day. We do it because we believe in our business and what we serve- and we’re proud to stand behind it. We have integrity and this isn’t just a job or a way for us to spend our days and make some money.

Our goal is that each time a customer comes in we’re better as a business than the last time they came in. We don’t try to be everything to everyone- we focus on something and do it really damn well. The more we’ve focused our business, the more successful we’ve become. I kind of got the impression that I wasn’t answering the way she had hoped. I got pretty excited about our business (like I do on this blog at times), why we’re different, and what the future holds for the area. I’m “bullish” as they say.

So the interview ended, some photos were taken (I hope to get my hands on them sometime), and we waited. After a couple of months we hadn’t heard or seen anything about an article, so I searched around online and found this:

Small businesses fighting to survive
Many owners say they are hanging by a thread that may soon snap

This writeup focused on how tough it is for some small businesses- how they’re down on the economy, how they’re losing money, and so on. It is tough out there, but honestly I told the reporter that I feel like I have more job security now than when I worked my “cushy” corporate job, had a pension, etc. because we control our own destiny. I was excited about the Pittsburgh coffee scene and all the great things we were going to help bring to the area. I guess I just didn’t have enough negative things to say- so that’s why it took nearly four months for my interview comments to be taken out of context.

Have you ever found yourself…

Published

Luke

on August 2, 2008

in Coffee

. 2 Comments

Have you ever found yourself on a beautiful summer Saturday afternoon… in front of a computer… posting on an internet message board? Wait it gets better.

On a message board, no a single discussion thread, very specific to your particular interest? An interest your friends may consider kind of an obsession? Do you find yourself getting really fired up and just posting a whole bunch of stuff that probably few folks outside of that inner circle will ever read? Have you ever done that?

It goes down like this… have you ever just found yourself on a website called Coffee Geek, in the forums, posting in Regional>>United States East>>Subject: Do you dare rate Pittsburgh’s coffee bars?

I’m crazy- and I just spent an hour on there. I just keep getting sucked in. Damn you coffeegeek.

Coffee & Pirates?

Published

Luke

on July 19, 2008

in Coffee

. 0 Comments

One of the neat things about our website is that we can see what sites refer traffic here. We can also see what search results people used to find us (or accidentally found us based on some searches). Today I logged in and saw a bunch of referrals coming in from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. I followed the link and found myself reading yesterday’s Pirates Q&A. I missed it because I haven’t had the time to follow the Pirates too closely this season, but I really enjoyed reading Dejan Kovacevic’s columns when he used to do the Penguins Q&A. Anyway… if you scroll all the way to the bottom he talks about what makes Pittsburgh great:

Thing No. 100 that makes Pittsburgh great: (And who will not appreciate such accidental symmetry with this final old-fashioned Q&A?) The 2100 block of the Strip District.

The most frequent requests to this forum, though almost always unpublished, have not been related to baseball but to the Pittsburgh feature, and it usually has gone like this: Me and my so-and-so are coming to the city for such-and-such time for only a day or two. What is the one thing someone there would recommend other than the usual Incline, Point State Park, riverfront fare?

So, consider this the answer …

Drive or walk into the Strip, anywhere between the 2000 and 2100 blocks between Smallman and Liberty, and just get lost. Go anywhere. Left, right, up, down, into alleys, over the main drags, even in places where you think there could not possibly be any interesting. You will find no fewer than four of the region’s five best coffee places. That includes La Prima, the very best I have found anywhere in the country, and that means the main store on 21st Street as well as the open-to-the-public warehouse where they roast the beans right in front of you. (Best smell on the planet, even when you live a mile up river and it makes its way to your front porch each day around 4:30 when the bulk of the roasting is done.) There are enough Italians in the place, speaking the native language and complaining about soccer, that the ATM across the corner offers Italian as one of its language options. And there are other coffee places, too, including one that claims to have the widest selection of exotic — and expensive — coffees anywhere in the city on the corner of 21st and Smallman. It is called 21st Street Cafe, and it recently claimed to sell a pound of “the very best coffee in the world” for $50. Yes, someone bought it. (Not me.)

One also can find the best, freshest foods at Pennsylvania Macaroni and other adjacent markets, one of the neatest restaurants anywhere in Kaya, the alley-bound Enrico Biscotti, the used-book depository Bradley’s right across the street, the homemade soups at the mini-grocery Alex’s International, and … honestly, I could list pretty much everything within a stone’s throw.

Nothing I write here will do it justice. Check the site, set aside some time and go for yourself. It is quintessential, indispensable Pittsburgh, and I miss it more than any other place when away from home …