Welcome to the Daily Rise: The Power of Local

Why I've been returning to my local coffee shop, even if it's in a grocery store

Source: Daily Rise Coffee Facebook Page

I am sitting at my family’s kitchen table in Utah as I write this, putting words on the bright screen that stands contrast to the dark night outside. It is 7am here, 9am on the East Coast. This conversion of Eastern Time to Mountain Time really makes you feel like a morning powerhouse.

I’ve been in Utah all week, as my team at work is temporarily remote, and I’ve spent most of my time at this kitchen table working. On week days, I get up at 6:30am to log on for the East Coast work day. I then plow through until dark, here, at this kitchen table, except for 20 minutes where I do my favorite remote, Utah, work day activity: I visit the Daily Rise Coffee shop.

To understand why I’m dedicating an entire blog post to the Daily Rise, it is important to visualize its location: a fairly sterile booth in The Fresh Market grocery store. The shop is run by Ben, a cheery local, who has a knack for remembering (or just explicitly guessing) people’s orders. He remembers faces first, then whether you like sweetener or not, your order, and lastly, your name. Coming to Utah a few weeks a year, Ben doesn’t remember what I want from the booth. But every time he sees me, he welcomes me back to town and makes sure to tell me that I do not like my coffee sweet.

As someone who treats grocery store coffee shops like a person on public transport with a hacking cough, I’ve been intrigued by my desire to return to the Daily Rise every day. Even more so, I’ve been surprised by how crowded the booth is every time I’m there. People of all ages and backgrounds drive past the several artisan coffee shops scattered through Park City town to crowd around the light wooden edges of the booth and chat with Ben. They want to hear their order repeated back, chat about the news of the day, and receive a (fairly middle-of-the-pack) cup of coffee. When Ben isn’t there on the weekends, the line dissolves.  

There has been a lot of commotion in consumer business news recently about the rise of the Shoppy Shop, simply explained as stores that sell “small-washed products.” “Small washing” refers to a product that appears locally made when under the hood, it is a scaled e-commerce good (think: Graza, Brightland, Diaspora, Fishwife). “Small-washing” is an intentional branding decision based on the notion that people want things that feel local (even if they are actually not.) Local – unlike large, e-commerce brands – comes with an affiliation personal identity and place, an emotional benefit we are willing to pay up for. And so, to reap the profits of “the local”, companies have begun to fake it.

Reading about the Shoppy Shop and the products it sells has helped me explain my love for the Daily Rise. While people may visit the Shoppy Shop to buy products that look local, the Daily Rise provides me with a similarly valued experience: a place that feels local. There is, perhaps, no business with more of a social ecosystem around it than a coffee shop, and there is no more “local” of a social ecosystem to be found in Park City than that created at the Daily Rise.

Coffee shops are considered a “third place” in society (not the home or office.)^[1] They are where we hold “long range” interactions, and where we’ve mingled and shared ideas since the Ottoman Empire. Coffee shops provide us with a “daily experience and identity that cannot be quantified.”^[2] Our coffee orders, and where we do the ordering, contribute to how we want to be perceived as people. Are you a Trenta Cold Brew from Starbucks or a Cortado from the small, artisan coffee shop x book store x wine bar x ping pong venue down the street? Humans are tribal, and coffee shops are our HQ. The more you can make someone feel like part of the tribe, the better you can do as a coffee (or any) business.

Which brings me back to Ben at the Daily Rise…

Ben, probably without realizing it, has created a strong coffee tribe by playing up the local experience. Every time he recognizes a face, he indoctrinates someone into the Daily Rise community. And then, like clockwork, they overlook the stark aesthetic to return the next day, driven less by a desire for caffeine and more to fulfill the nagging sense that he is expecting you. And through these interactions, tribal status forms. At first, being recognized is enough. And then you want Ben to remember your order. Then, you want him to be more excited to see you than the others in line. There are levels to the Daily Rise community, and everyone is willing to pay to be at the top.

The difference between feeling local (the Daily Rise) and seeming local (the Shoppy Shop products) is that feeling local cannot be capitalized on and then homogenized. A problem with the small-washed products at your local specialty store is that they have the scale to be found at every other specialty store in your region. It is a possibility that eventually, if small-washing keeps up, every specialty store’s inventory will be the same. There can be thousands of Graza olive oil bottles, but there is only one Ben.

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^[1] The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg.

^[2] “The Smart Reason We Waste Our Dollars on Coffee,” Forbes.