Remember when we wanted Starbuck's on Queens Boulevard to burn? I sure do. Remember too, when our first Mom-and-Pop coffee shop opened? It was called The Grind. Those were good times. We had a place to go to and a place to point a finger at.
Not so much anymore. We can still point at Starbuck's all we want and say that, even if hipster gentrification seems a ways off - corporate gentrification is at our door. But, Mom and Pop are letting us down as well.
The Grind is coming to a screeching, filthy, understocked halt. And, slowly, to boot.
Several recent visits have shown the place to be heading down the tubes - with slow service, dirty tables, no napkins, no coffee stirrers, no smiles, loud music, no change and no fresh pastry. Don't get me wrong - I like a place with some personality, and I'll still stop off at The Grind and suffer through to get the occasional coffee, but dang, man, if you're going to run a business that sells coffee, do it well and do it quick.
I give the place three months tops.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
How To Run a Business Into The Grind
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3 comments:
Ya know, you can always hit Aubergine. They serve Irving Farm coffee, and are very pleasant.
Aubergine is lovely--Lynn & I just had lunch there the other day.
But Wesley & I live on the opposite end of the neighborhood, and 25 minutes is a long way to walk for a cuppa joe. It'd be nice to have something on our side of the Boulevard.
Yeah, The Grind is a lost cause. The last time I was in there about a month ago I thought the fruit flies were going to fly away with my cookie.
There's a nice cafe on Skillman near 46th (across the street from Quaint) which is new and clean with good coffee and great pastries. (Can't remember the name.) Still a hike for south-siders, but a few blocks closer than Aubergine.
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