Ode to the DBC

For those of you who don't know, we are lucky enough to have a Dunn Bros Coffee in northern JoCo. For this reason alone, JoCoSOB, I strongly suggest you reconsider ceding from everything north of 95th Street. Now, DBC is a chain, make no mistake. There is nothing wrong with that in my humble opinion IF in the process of being a chain, you don't lose grasp of product quality and the integrity of your business model. Back in oh, say '97, I was a minion of Ed Dunn back at one of his hometown shops in Minneapolis. I could sling a superior hazelnut latte with the best of them. Back then I also realized that you can most certainly taste the difference in beans that are roasted on premises. The Bros. Dunn had decided early on that they would spread their bean knowledge far and wide. This afternoon when I walked into the location here off Metcalf I was overcome with the aromatic nostaligia that a brewed DBC bean elicits in me. God, if this isn't the best coffee on the face of the planet AND free wi-fi (which I'd forgotten about). The other thing I love is that this is an actual coffee shop. They don't have giant glorified Slurpee machines. You want a Frappacino? Go over to those amateurs with the green logo across the parking lot (yeah, they moved in about 6 mos after DBC opened its doors here in the strip mall next to Half-Priced Books). You want iced coffee? The people in the green smocks ask you what flavor (um, COFFEE flavor?). Here, they tap the vat of cold-pressed coffee that, once you taste, you will never again settle for some hot-brewed-over-ice-bitter POS.
Ed Dunn, you delicious owl-looking bastard, these many years later after a voice mail message informing me that my services were no longer needed, you've finally won my respect. No, not with your "Got time to lean; got time to clean" mantra, but by staying the course of treating your customer like they know a thing or two.