Coffee Novelist

I don’t write about coffee, I write about what coffee does. How it collects us, unites us and affects us.

A trip to my Starbucks #204 It is the summer of 1992. In my “Starbucks novel”, Tripio, Jay works at a Starbucks store #204 located on north side of Chicago on the corner of Clark, Diversey and Broadway. In Tripio, for the sake of brevity and authenticity, I refer to it simply as store #204, …

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Books for the Starbucks fan on your list A while back I read How Starbucks Saved my Life by Michael Gates Gill. In the interest of full disclosure, I read it out of curiosity, as opposed to organic intellectual interest. In other words, I read it to see how that memoir compared to my historical …

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I was finally able to revise and upgrade the cover of my first novel, Tripio. It had been bugging me for years, like something your doctor would mention at your yearly check-up. Not life threatening, or even painful, but maybe you should do something about it. And so, the process never made it to the …

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      H.B “”So are you here for work?” Howard Behar asked me. We had stepped outside to sit down at his table of choice.   ‘For the week.” I responded with my trademark caution. I had not worked for Starbucks since 1994. I did run one of the first Barnes & Noble Starbucks …

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Howard Shultz and I were partners once. The Starbucks Coffee Company in my historical fiction novel Tripio was, in real life, far and away the best workplace I have experience, before or since. There have been a lot more workplaces since I hung up my apron than I care to admit. My point is, it …

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Books for the Starbucks fan on your list A while back I read How Starbucks Saved my Life by Michael Gates Gill. In the interest of full disclosure, I read it out of curiosity, as opposed to organic intellectual interest. In other words, I read it to see how that memoir compared to my historical …

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 Has Starbucks gone to pieces? Starbucks today and the Starbucks I worked at in Chicago and set my historical fiction novel Tripio in, would have a hard time recognizing each other. For one, there are about 25,000 more stores and 200,000 more employees around than when I wore the green apron. Those numbers tell the …

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.   Thoughts on Barista to Boardroom   “It felt like the circle had softly closed, like it was all meant to happen exactly that way. I could now let go and move forward, embracing life as a former partner.’ These couple of sentences conclude Christne McHugh’s’ memoir, From Barista to Boardroom.  In my historical …

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. ‘He reminded us that the ambitions for Starbucks were focused on large and global company growth.”   – from Barista to Boardroom recounting Howard Schultz announcing Starbuck’s IPO       “I look down the now quiet tree lined street and wonder why it wasn’t enough? Why wasn’t a record breaking weekend at store …

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“It is odd to realize how little we know ourselves.” -Oscar Wilde “What is sometimes simply needed is just a gap of pure time, an insulating period, between the making of your art and the time your share it with others.” – Art & Fear -Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Art Making   …

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