Head to Head - Coffee shop culture needs real live chatter

At the risk of waxing nostalgic, let’s hark back to the Chatterbox Café, that legendary coffee shop of the late 1980s, operating out of a defunct real estate office on the site that is now NatureWorks grocery. If memory serves, it had one of those little bells that jingled when the front door opened. Not that you could hear the bell. The place was always full. The Chatterbox was a cacophony of pungent hot coffee, caffeinated conversation, jangling silverware and spikey haired waitresses with nose studs barking out food orders.

The Chatterbox was iconic “Salt Spring” and the very definition of a classic coffee shop. Of course, in the late ’80’s, the electronic zeitgeist was slightly different. State-of-the-art cell phones were the size of a size 10 Oxford, computers were still as immense as hope chests and coffee was dispensed from giant five-gallon Bunnomatic urns.

My, how things have changed. Salt Spring’s coffee shops all sport massive Italian espresso machines, drizzling out thick black shots bearing the name of exotic locales half-way around the world — Ethiopian yirgacheffe, Sumatra, Papua New Guinea. The jangling of coffee spoons has been supplanted by the clicking of laptop keyboards and Blackberries. The Chatterbox roar of chitchat is now the one-way murmur of cell-phone conversation.

Howard Schultz is the founder of Starbucks. He is as responsible for changing the way North America drinks coffee as Steve Jobs was for changing the landscape of personal computers. Schultz envisioned the coffee house as being the “third place” — the other two being home and office. He envisioned the coffee house as a comfortable sanctuary inhabited by like-minded souls sipping a small caffeinated luxury — a reprieve from the everyday frantic craziness that describes the lives of the beleaguered working stiff.

While there remains a vestige of the original dream, Starbucks and coffee shops around the globe have had to swim with the electronic tsunami driven by Steve Jobs and Apple. Salt Spring is not immune to this sea change. With few exceptions our coffee shops offer and trumpet their Wi-Fi hot spots. TJ Beans goes further, offering free North American long distance and laptop charging stations. At what point does a café become someone’s satellite office that sells coffee? Has the tail begun wagging the dog? What differentiates McDonald’s (which now offers inexpensive, machine-made cappuccinos and free Wi-Fi) from the Salt Spring Coffee Company?

Many take full advantage of these niceties. Armed with a cell phone and a laptop, one’s office can be anywhere with a few internet signal bars. Why bother to rent office space?

These internet hobos have become more than a slight annoyance to shop operators. A budding Bill Gates or an aspiring Margaret Atwood can decimate a café’s bottom line in short order, as they park themselves at a table with a $2 cup of drip coffee and stay for hours fielding calls and banging away on their laptops.

Do the math. The average Starbucks customer spends $3.50 and I’m guessing stays for 20 minutes. If there is some guy sitting at one table for four hours, that represents a potential 12 turnovers and a loss of about $100, assuming that most tables live with two chairs. If you welcome four or five of these “guests” during the day, it can make a serious dent in the coffee shop’s business plan. This may well explain why most Starbucks locations now sport drive-through window service — maximum profit with minimal overhead.

What’s the answer for the small-town coffee shop that doesn’t have the option of a drive-through? How do you pay the rent and make payroll without tossing out regulars who chronically overstay their welcome? Some shops have begun shutting down power outlets so that struggling authors can invoke their muse only as long as their laptop batteries hold out.

Some shops stubbornly choose not to participate. Recently, I discovered a coffee shop at the lower end of Fisgard Street in Victoria called Beans Around the World. I sat down with my latté and turned on my laptop, only to discover there was no internet. Vaguely incensed, I cornered the manager who was busy penciling in staff hours at the table next to me. “We feel that Wi-Fi is the antithesis of what a coffee house should be.” Counter culture. What a concept.

Beans Around the World is always packed. It is a cacophony of pungent hot coffee, caffeinated conversation, jangling silverware and spikey haired waitresses with nose studs barking out food orders. Wait a minute . . . I’ve seen this before.

A great coffee shop isn’t defined by electronics or big shiny espresso machines. It’s about the passion of people pulling the shots and the people enjoying them. Great atmosphere is hard to define. It is the intangible end result of the personal vision of the owner.

In Ganges, we have plenty of coffee shops to cover all personality types. The Roasters brings an urban, slightly corporate game to the table. TJ Beans, a slightly more home-grown feel, with the owners often sitting on the steps outside next to a dog water bowl. Café Talia offers a quiet refuge from the madding crowd. Try these out, and all the other little coffee shops scattered over the island. One of them is sure to fit.

It’s time the Chamber of Commerce had a Chatterbox Counterculture Award, in recognition of the Salt Spring coffee shop that most exemplifies the exuberance of that original namesake and the crazy quilt fabric that defines Salt Spring.

In the meantime, make mine an extra hot skinny latté in a porcelain cup. Ich bin ein Salt Springer!

republicofsaltspring@mac.com