Coffee shops are not just a place where people go to get their daily or hourly coffee fix. They are equipped with an assortment of caffeinated drinks to keep them awake and carbohydrate-stuffed snacks to give one a blood sugar boost to the moon. Mainly you get what you'd expect – coffee and tea. At the Neutral Ground there is hot chocolate, Perrier, energy drinks, and so on and it defies the ‘normal’ idea of what a coffee shop is supposed to consist of on a base level.
A cappucino made by one of the talented Neutral Ground baristas.
The food offered in coffee shops usually consists of baked goods like bagels and cookies. Some coffee shops offer full meals as well. The Neutral Ground has begun to offer several different food plates: French bread with vinaigrette, chicken paté, cheese -- heck, you can even ask for a single bowl full of assorted olives (I've had one of the musicians playing ask for that as the compensation they receive for playing a free gig).
Some coffee shops treat food as an aside to the real deal: a good shot of espresso. Others treat it is as a fine art, and they should. Because let's be honest: many people don't just want coffee, they want something to eat, too. Most coffee shops have the same pre-frozen, pre-packaged muffins and bagels, but there are cafés that go to the extreme to make sure their customers have everything they could possibly want. At the Neutral Ground, there are some pre-packaged foods like Goldfish, but there are also dishes of toasted French bread with cheese or meat and so on. I think it's important that when we consider a coffee shop, we don't just consider its coffee, but the food as well. It's a vital aspect to the success of a coffee shop because it determines whether people will stay for fifteen minutes or a few hours -- and whether they will come back.
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