Caribou Coffee is in the midst of a major rebranding and restructuring effort. Part of it involves converting some outlets to new corporate cousin Peet’s Coffee, and part of it involves shuttering a bunch of stores. One of the stores slated for closure this Sunday is near and dear to me: the East Blvd. location in Charlotte, NC.
It’s not that the coffee was better than Starbucks, or that the physical building was more inviting than the Starbucks three blocks away. Rather, when I first moved to Charlotte in summer 2007, I preferred going to that Caribou because A) I didn’t know it was a massive chain and thought of it as the more “local” option, and B) it really was a more local option, in the sense that people used the Dilworth location as a neighborhood hub in a way they didn’t use the Starbucks.
Specific to me, I mourn the loss of that meeting place, but, too, nothing can take away my memories. That coffee shop was where the Official Wife of Creamy Middles and I spent many a weekend afternoon getting work done over mochas and banana bread, and people-watching over mochas and banana bread, and planning our lives together over mochas and banana bread.
There was the time we met with our wedding DJ, Travis, to discuss how he would emcee our reception. As I recall, it was about 8pm on a weekday, and the place was half-full. We told him that we did not want the Chicken Dance, or the Electric Slide, or 1970s disco. We wanted lots of current Top 40, lots of 90s and 2000s rap, we said. Travis’s eyes lit up.
"Oh, I feel you," he said, and, while raising the roof, in full-throated song, belted, "Thiiiiis is how we dooooo it!"
The Official Wife and I giggled, and Travis, still beaming, looked around at all the people staring at him. “What, what Caribou!” he said.
There was also the time I saw Charlotte basketball legend Muggsy Bogues just chillin’, wearing his bluetooth, surfing on his laptop.
There was the time just after I’d moved to Charlotte, one of the first times I ever went to that Caribou, back before I even had a laptop, back before I had a smartphone… While drinking coffee and reading a book, a friend who would later be my best man called me from Cleveland to tell me Appalachian State was hanging tough against Michigan.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ujXsiD7AMk]
And so on.
There are other coffee shops, and God knows I spend too much money on artificially-sweetened liquid in paper cups largely in order to use an internet connection that’s less reliable than the one I pay for already at home. The chain will be fine — or, at least, the conglomerate that owns the chain will be fine, not that I particularly care for the conglomerate. The employees were, apparently, told of the impending closure only one week in advance, more or less at about the same time as everyone else, which sucks, and I wish them the best from the vantage point of someone who is currently employed and doesn’t have any way to materially help any of them.
In that light, I shouldn’t be bothered by Caribou’s retreat from the Charlotte region. It — the larger entity — chose to punt me, this place, even though the Dilworth location was, as best I could tell, good. Not great, not perfect. But a neighborhood pillar, and good.
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