Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee

Preview: Stone Creek

I had a great experience at Stone Creek Coffee's Shorewood location today, and also picked up their excellent new wholesale catalog. More later tonight.

Glendale/Whitefish Bay: Snapshot: Alterra Bayshore

I'm enjoying my second mug of one of my favorite Alterra coffees, the Nicaragua Don Zeledon Organic Fair Trade.  I can attest that the numerous politically correct modifiers are matched by great taste--and this week, an equally great price!  It's so great in milk, I really want to try it as shots for a latte or cappuccino.  The price might not be so great if I end up buying a home barista setup for that purpose :-/ 

East Side/Riverwest: Snapshots: Columbia Hospital

I work very close to Columbia Hospital, so I often walk over there around lunchtime to buy something from the vending machines or, occasionally, from the cafe.  In an entirely non-racist sense, I can say that Columbia is the most ghettoest place I've been since I moved out of, well, the ghetto.  (OK, the Apu Mart on the corner of Humboldt and North is a little more ghettoest).  "Ghetto" means, to me, the steadfast refusal to invest one cent in maintenance, upkeep, or other capital improvements, preferring to divert every last cent to profit.  In our free-market system, there are really only two sanctions for this behavior.  One is the law--which doesn't always work very effectively.  The offenses of slum landlords really have to climb to almost unbelievable proportions (like, literally sh*t pouring on people) before the slow-moving arm of the law is roused into action.

The other sanction is social opprobrium--indeed, outrage.  I really think this is long due for a comeback.  This is a relatively trivial thing, but I've often had trouble with malfunctioning vending machines at Columbia.  Today, I literally had just put in my 65 cents for a carton of milk when the machine lost power and conked out.  Admittedly, I thought that was hilarious.  Still, in light of the parent organization's decision to close Columbia Hospital, I wonder if they are just letting the place slowly die.  I take exception to that approach.

I must disclose that one year ago, I went to Columbia for an actual medical procedure:  I had an ultrasound of my abdomen taken to see whether my kidneys show signs of Polycystic Kidney Disease, which I have a 50% chance of developing.  My care was as professional as I could have asked for.  Still, it's hard not to extrapolate from a lack of attention to the little things.

Alterra: Article on Alterra's Environmental Efforts

For the sake of fairness, I felt compelled to do a little Google searching in order to find out about some of the charitable efforts in which Alterra engages.  I found this article.  The introductory paragraph, in particular, provides an excellent summary of the situation.  My commentary would be that in response to the statement that they have to serve hot drinks in paper cups, obviously that applies only to to-go beverages (and even then, only with qualifications).  I'm guessing that by asking each and every customer whether a paper cup or ceramic mug is desired, they could decrease paper cup consumption by 10% or more.  To my mind, this is simply a matter of motivation and resolve.

Generally, I am looking for a little more documentation from Alterra and perhaps less imagery.  At Beans & Barley this morning, I noticed that the Alterra bulk coffee containers are decorated with colorful art for each variety (good) but the motifs often seem to feature angry-looking people raising their fist (not so good?).  It's a free country, but that being said, spare me the heavy-handed serving of ideology.  Your job, coffee companies, is to sell me a cup of coffee--or bag of beans, as the case may be--and a smile.  If that's too mundane for your taste, maybe you should have become UWM professors or administrators.

I also wonder if the reason for the imagery is not so much concern with the plight of poor Central and South Americans and East Asians as the expectation that it will resonate with Beans & Barley customers.

Glendale/Whitefish Bay: Snapshots: Bruegger's (E. Silver Spring Dr.)

For the second time this week, I'm at Bruegger's.  I've come to really like this place, preferring it to Panera.  One word: BOGO.  Like dogs (and Superman) hearing super-high frequencies, I can hear the word "BOGO" from miles away.  What's more, the offer applies to something that's already a great deal: half a dozen last night's bagels for $2.49.  Does that sound tacky?  How old do you suppose Starbucks bagels are?  (The term "carbon dating" comes to mind.)

Editorial: Web/Tech: Twightsizing

Earlier today, I coined a sniglet: Twightsizing = to "unfollow" people on Twitter in an effort to make one's use of the service manageable, while agonizing over the possible offense caused thereby.  A week ago, I'd decided to kill my Twitter account, but now want to keep it for possible future use.  Which puts me in an awkward position.  Some follows gotta go.  (If you're reading this, you're not likely to be affected--not that I presume you care!)

Further adding to my frustration with the service is that I just discovered that I'd been failing to check my @mkecoffee replies.  The home page doesn't indicate when new messages arrive, nor does it forward them to my e-mail as it does with direct messages.  Shee-yit!  Now I have to face the prospect of writing a bunch of messages saying, "Sorry I didn't reply to your message...because I didn't see it...because I'm a moron.  Yeah."

I already have to check my spam boxes for my various e-mail accounts for the inevitable misdirected e-mails.  One of my reasons for liking Facebook it that is doesn't have any nooks or crannies where messages can be lost.  And isn't it ironic to be setting up all of these avenues for people to communicate with me, only to thereby create more such traps in which communication can fall into oblivion?

Editorials: Environment: Earth Day

I didn't realize that today is the actual observance of Earth Day.  The marketing phenomenon it's become makes it seem more like a season than a holiday.  I write this without derision: I'm a pretty green guy myself, but I think environmentalism is one area where we need, in the immortal words of Lynette Scavo, "less yakkin', more jackin'!" (hey, no comments from the peanut gallery!)

Unfortunately, I neglected to post this until now, but Stone Creek Coffee is offering free drinks (including specialty drinks) to those who bring in a travel mug or purchase one onsite.  Yay Stone Creek!

In response to my post of yesterday regarding Alterra's environmental performance, reader dwillis posted the following insightful comment, which I find too informative and pertinent to languish in comment oblivion:

How about the lack of recycling of #1 plastic cups? Last summer they went through a phase with signage saying, to paraphrase, "hey, it's cool that we don't recycle plastic because we're spending extra for corn-based biodegradable plasticware".....which is a highly suspect position since the corn-based stuff is created mainly with oil products (gas, fertilizer) and irrigation, and doesn't get a chance to degrade when it's sealed up tight in a landfill. But now they're back to an even worse situation, using good quality #1 plastic and not a sign of recycling anywhere. How much wind power do they have to buy to offset that?

East Side/Riverwest: Snapshot: Alterra on Prospect

My string of luck in encountering good quality and service at the places I go continues unabated. This early evening, I'm enjoying a mug of Cafe Voltaire at Alterra on Prospect and a fresh Bountiful Garden muffin.  Apropos of nothing, while walking on the Oak Leaf trail from the Upper to the Lower East Side, I heard a whole complement of church bells and carillons marking the 6 p.m. hour.  Church bells are among my top five favorite things in life, so the unexpected concert was especially welcome.  (Unexpected, because it doesn't exactly fit my stereotype of the neighborhoood!)

Despite my recent good experiences, I have to voice one criticism that's been bugging me for a while: Alterra seems to do a poor job of promoting the use of ceramic mugs.  (I have to qualify this by stating that they're doing about 30% in the cafe right now, which is actually above average.)  Considering the amount of "for here" business they do, as far as I can tell, customers aren't given ceramic unless they specifically ask for them.  In that light, I find myself less receptive to hearing about any environmental or social welfare initiatives in which Alterra is active.  The way I see it, for Alterra, the beverages that cross the counter are where the rubber hits the road.  It's what they do.  If they don't take advantage of that huge opportunity to make an environmental difference, everything else seems diminished.

Editorial: Wanted: Wallet Viagra

I must be about to die or something, as I have a backlog of about a week's worth of positive experiences that I haven't gotten around to writing about.  Actually, one part of me already has died: the free-spending part.  I actually flinched just now at the counter at Sears.  That's pretty sad.  I haven't been that much of a Sears shopper in my lifetime (Tarzhay all the way here), but more so over the last couple years. This is mostly to spite Bayshore's disrespect of the store--today, I noticed that the East parking lot turns into a lunar crater-scape when you approach the low-end retailer.  In addition, I've heard rumors that Sears is likely to be the next headline-grabbing closure (though this was on the plane down to Arizona--who knows what difference the intervening months of prolonged recession may have made), so bargains seem especially likely.  Today, though, my purchases didn't scan in at 30% or less than the tag price as they usually do, and I just couldn't do that $26 wallet--which, ironically, I could fill at the moment...

However, feeling flush isn't translating into spending.  And I'm the biggest spendthrift I know!  For whatever reason--as a (still) overemployed person, the reasons are less quantifiable for me than for many others--the buzz was killed in a big way earlier this year and hasn't returned.  I also note that the note struck by the media has changed from trying to tell us it's our patriotic duty to spend to making frugality look like the latest and greatest bandwagon.

Mequon: Snapshots: Panera

I'm brunching at Panera in Mequon.  I've had the Fuji Apple Chicken salad ($6.99), which was not quite as good as my accustomed House Citrus Salad at Alterra, but good nonetheless.  The coffee isn't as good as I remember from my last visits.  Of the various varieties, I have to give the edge to the Dark Roast.  In a Starbucks-like move that is not unwelcome, a server walked around the dining room offering samples of a kind of quiche on a croissant (that must be the egg & cheese breakfast sandwich).

Things there should be sniglets for: The person a few tables away who talks nonstop during a visit to any given Starbucks/Panera kind of joint, invariably at high volume and with a similar kind of grating accent as that of the hijackers in United 93, making you wish they'd crank up the volume on the Kenny G to mask it.