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A Defiant Coffee Shop Stares Back at Starbucks - New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/nyregion/25towns.html

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Dith Pran/The New York Times

The owners of a coffee shop that had gained a following in Little Falls, N.J., stepped up the competition when another Starbucks opened in the area.

OUR TOWNS

A Defiant Coffee Shop Stares Back at Starbucks

Dith Pran/The New York Times

A local coffee shop competes with Starbucks in New Jersey.

By PETER APPLEBOME Published: November 25, 2007

LITTLE FALLS, N.J.

Right on time, the Season of Excess has

begun with a flood of big issues to

ponder.

All the way from Australia, comes the first “War on

Christmas” dust-up with word that some Santas there have

been asked to say “Ha! Ha! Ha!” rather than “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

since the latter — post gangsta rap and post Imus — now is

seen as demeaning to women. I am not making this up.

Groups like the Network of Spiritual Progressives and

countless others are banging the “don’t-buy” or

“don’t-buy-much” bell. At the same time, over on

Bloomberg Radio all they’re talking about is whether a

heroic spasm of Christmas shopping will save the economy

and those Wall Street bonuses post subprime meltdown,

post stock market going in the tank and post near-$100

barrels of oil.

Truth to tell, Rhonda and Jon Mallek were not really

thinking of Christmas this month when they fired a shot

across the bow of mighty Starbucks. Still, it turns out the

coffee war of Passaic County does get at two of the recurring themes of the season —

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A Defiant Coffee Shop Stares Back at Starbucks - New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/nyregion/25towns.html

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caffeine and where to spend those holiday dollars.

The Malleks’ story really began more than three years ago when Rhonda, a former events

planner, and Jon, a former heavy metal musician turned I.T. executive, got it in their

minds to open a coffee shop. He was a coffee obsessive partial to high-test espresso. She

was a detail obsessive, intent on creating a place where people would come for the coffee

and for whatever amorphous elements of ambience make a place a hangout, a second

home, as much as a place selling something.

Soon enough they found an unpretentious location next to a hair salon on Main Street in

Little Falls, where one owner after another had tried and failed to make a coffee shop

work. They opened the Fine Grind in June 2005 offering table service, oversize porcelain

mugs, coffee roasted fresh every morning, yerba maté, blendesso frozen drinks, toasted

bagel sticks, designer panini and the rest. A favorite is frozen hot chocolate or Fro Ho,

which, in honor of the season — and the new Santa guidelines notwithstanding — for now

is billed as Fro Ho Ho.

They immediately started building a loyal cadre of regulars, so neither was all that worried

when yet another Starbucks — there are about 12 in the area — opened about a half-mile

away on Route 23, just down the road from two others at the Willowbrook Mall.

Still, Mrs. Mallek was a bit taken aback when she saw two of the regulars — the regulars! —

near her shop, Starbucks cups in hand, not long after the new one opened last summer.

And so came the idea of the billboard, about a half block from the Starbucks — as close as

they could get — reading: “We may not be Big ... but we’re not Bitter!” And “We ARE your

neighborhood coffee spot!” It was like Rocky throwing that first gutsy haymaker at Apollo

Creed.

The idea was not to join the Starbucks haters, who can be found, it seems, either at

Starbucks itself or on Internet sites like We Hate Starbucks or I Hate Starbucks.

After all, Mrs. Mallek said, if not for Starbucks turning everyone in America into a coffee

addict, it would have been very difficult to build a business essentially trying to be a

smaller, friendlier alternative to Starbucks with better coffee.

“I’m not saying I want to shut them down,” Mrs. Mallek said. “I don’t expect them to say,

‘Gee, Rhonda doesn’t want us here so maybe we should close down.’ I just want to remind

people to remember us, to remember how important their purchasing decisions are, that

sometimes it’s worth it to drive that extra two minutes, even if the Starbucks is right

there.”

After all, she said, it’s not just coffee, and it’s not just her shop.

“I sometimes forget, too. I’ll go to the Home Depot when I can go to the hardware store in

Totowa, where they’ll actually take the time to find out which nut goes with which screw.

But if people want to have local small businesses, they need to support them.”

Americans might say they like David, but, in truth, we would much rather shop with

Goliath. So the Malleks figure they need to pay attention to the branding as well as the

coffee, to look local, but not too local. They are already thinking of more stores and have

been known to stop at the Empire of Caffeine themselves when there is no local

alternative.

“When you need coffee, you need coffee,” Mrs. Mallek said.

Like other small-business owners, they just want people to remember that if their idea of

biodiversity extends to commerce, along with Ha! Ha! Ha! or Ho! Ho! Ho!; Tall, Grande or

Venti (whichever is which); Too Much or Not Enough, it’s also worth asking Big or Small;

Local or Corporate; Main Street or Mall?

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