The Question of Coffee

We are often asked why we don't serve coffee.

Very often.

So very often.

And it is almost always someone new arriving in the store at this time of year when the pace is a little more conducive to conversation and serving coffee doesn't seem like such a big deal. Today was our first customer of the season to ask and Bill politely gave a brief explanation. Because the topic arises so often throughout the summer, I thought I would post the long winded explanation here for your reading pleasure.

We are always open to suggestions and take every suggestion into consideration but believe me when I say this; if you've thought of a way for us to serve coffee… we've already considered it.

The coffee question is probably one of our biggest and so I'm going to attempt to address precisely why we do not serve coffee at The Little Tart. So settle in because I'm about to make a short explanation very long.

I'll start by saying we have served coffee in the past. We have, in fact, tried several times to offer coffee in the store. We purchased a nice big coffee urn, stored up on good quality coffee, cups, spoons, sugar, and cream. What we didn't have was milk (well, we did have some in the house, but not the 1% the customer requested), nor did we have non-dairy creamer, artificial sweetener, decaf coffee (because why would you offer coffee without offering decaf coffee?), tea (because why would you offer coffee and not offer tea? And not the Earl Grey stuff Bill and I like to drink, but green, preferably decaf with a hint of lemon (which we do have but they're for baking), and finally honey, which we often have but it's for baking, hot toddies, and putting in our peanut butter samiches because that's how we like them.

Here's what we did; we purchased a second urn, made sure we had regular coffee, decaf coffee, sugar, artificial sweetener, cream, milk (2% - we refused to budge on that one), and non-dairy creamer. We also purchased a kettle for the store, several kinds of tea, lemon, and honey just for the tea. Phew!
And then Saturday morning in July arrived. Now, if you haven't seen the store on Saturday mornings in the summer it is often wall to wall people and lined up out the door. It takes two of us working the front to keep the line moving. The first customer requested four coffees. (I know because I write these things down in a little book - "Memoirs of The Little Tart" - that's going to happen one day.) I don't remember what they wanted in each coffee, but I do remember I didn't put enough milk in one, not enough sugar in another, and could I pour half of one of the coffees out and fill it with more coffee because now there's too much milk?

Ah!!! Ah!!! Ah!!!

Several people got tired of waiting and walked out. We quit selling coffee that very day.
We thought about and were later asked; "What about self serve?" That would certainly solve the problem of slowing down the line except…

Let's say we put a table with an urn for coffee, decaf coffee, tea (we'd have to pick one), cream, milk, sugar, sweetener, lemon, honey, cups, lids, spoons, napkins. The first question is: Where?
The Little Tart store front is only about 350 square feet. The space for our customers is less than half of that. Now imagine a Saturday morning (wall to wall people lined up out the door) and you're trying to get your coffee. Now add excited kids coming from or going to camp. Someone's going to get burnt. Need I say more?

We can't make the store any bigger and we certainly don't want to put anyone at risk.

Quite simply, offering coffee isn't as simple as it sounds. The fact is, we're not a coffee shop. We're a mom and pop, take-out, artisan pastry shop and we're happy with that. While we understand why people would want us to have coffee, we do offer the best baking we possibly can and hope that makes up for it!

If you made it this far, thank you so very much.

Have a wonderful evening.

Hold on. I know what someone is thinking...

What about that those little single serve k-cup thingies?

Uh... no.