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Barista Says He's Not Afraid of Starbucks

Local Coffee House vs. the Giant

By Destiny SmithPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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With Wittenberg University getting a second Starbucks location inside Thomas library, it’s set in stone that Springfield will have at least four of the coffee shops in town by this time next year. While this news may be exciting to fans of the company—especially to those college students who couldn’t get their Starbucks fix while away at school—it could mean death for small, local shops in the area.

Yet Tony Bullwinkel, a barista at Coffee Expressions, says he isn’t worried about the coffee super giant running them out of business.

“Sure it’s a scary idea, but the customers we have will keep coming,” he explained, with an easy going air, and unwavering confidence, between making "the usual" for a nurse stopping by on her lunch break, and a cup of whipped cream with rainbow sprinkles for a young girl who then demanded his help debating which was the proper tool for eating such a treat—a spoon, or a straw.

When asked what made him so confident, when others as far as downtown were expressing anxieties over the change, Bullwinkel, who’s worked as a barista for six of the twelve years Coffee Expressions has been in business, gave two reasons, the first of which being the shop’s casual and friendly atmosphere.

“No one will be upset if I don’t give them a corporate greeting,” he said, going on to explain that his favorite part of the job is that he can interact with people on his own terms. That he doesn't ever feel like he can't talk to his customers like they're both human beings, or get to know them, regardless of how often they come to the shop. “Sometimes I’m grumpy, and sometimes I’m not, and people get that. They aren’t going freak out, or shout for the manager if I don’t smile right.”

Less than a ten-minute walk from the University's Science Center, Coffee Expressions is very popular among students, professors, and people from the surrounding town. With a nice atmosphere, warm lighting, cozy chairs, and soft but upbeat music tracks buzzing faintly in the background, it's not hard to see why.

Sitting in the shop for an hour, you’ll see students tapping away at their laptops, working on their next paper or project with varying degrees of frantic urgency, or pouring over a text book with their favorite drink in one hand, and a half dead highlighter in the other, while a steady stream of customers file in and out, requesting "the usual," and updating the barista on the clock, at the time, about their test or how their child’s doing in football.

Yet a friendly environment isn’t the only thing Coffee Expressions has to offer. In fact, according to Bullwinkel, it’s not even the most important. That honor, he explained, went to their consistency.

“If you get a drink and come in the next day wanting the same thing, at the same time, you should get it,” he said, going on to explain that since the coffee shop opened twelve years ago, they’ve only changed their hours once, and that was with a lot of warning to their customers prior to the change.

The coffee shop is a yearly stop on the Tour of Springfield, that’s offered to Wittenberg freshman, and according to him it relies heavily on word of mouth to get new customers. When asked, Bullwinkel said that he hasn’t seen a change since the first Starbucks opened, and he doesn’t expect to see one with the last.

“I think we’ll be fine, and if not, 12 years was a good go.”

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About the Creator

Destiny Smith

Writing is one of the few constants I've had throughout my life, and Vocal seemed like the perfect opportunity to put it all somewhere.

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