UNC students work hard enough to merit an independent coffee shop easily accessible from campus. We have plenty of food places, we have bars, we have convenience stores, but if you want a high quality cup of coffee, you have to walk a good distance.
First, let me say that I love The Meantime on campus and the Franklin Street Starbucks serves its purpose for quick, consistent coffee. There is also Carolina Coffee Shop, which is great if you want breakfast food, but it isn’t really a coffee shop in the traditional sense. All these places have a few inherent drawbacks. On-campus coffee shops are often places to do work or meet with professors — not to just hang out and get a drink.
Sometimes you need an off-campus place to drink coffee, a place separate from the area where a lot of students live and study. You could go to Starbucks and get a deliciously sweet drink served by friendly staff, but the ambiance of Starbucks is anything but unique and most coffee lovers know it does not serve the best coffee in the area.
So, if you don’t want an on-campus coffee shop and you don’t want Starbucks, then you’re going to need a car, bus or some good walking shoes. Using Google’s recommended walking path from Wilson Library, Bread & Butter is 1.1 miles away, Open Eye and Caffe Driade are about 1.6 miles away and Johnny’s Gone Fishing is 2.5 miles away. Maybe on a nice spring day these long walks sound fun, but on a rainy January day, it sounds awful. The bus system makes the coffee trek more accessible, but taking a bus can still take 15 to 20 minutes depending on traffic.
A local coffee shop can be a non-academic setting to do homework. It can be a place to congregate as a larger community. It can be a staging ground for local activism and event planning. We all have heard the benefits of locally owned businesses, and with a growing trend of corporations moving onto Franklin Street, it would be nice to see more purely Chapel Hill establishments across from our beautiful campus.
I know rent can be expensive in the area, so it doesn’t need to be massive or even right on Franklin Street. Rosemary is just as good, and it's closer to The Daily Tar Heel office where I generally can be found.
I hope this column establishes that there is a lack of supply for a local coffee shop in the immediate campus community. As anyone trying to find an open table at Open Eye knows, there is clearly a demand for quality, locally owned coffee in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area. I’m sure some people think I am complaining about a small issue, but I think it is well within the entrepreneurial spirit of this University to want a more accessible, locally owned coffee shop.
