The story behind You Are Marvelous! David Solow, Luzene Hill, Areli's DNA and CC OWD shop design. In the fall of 2015, we worked with David Solow to create the design of CC OWD, our second location. David created a usable art installation that interconnected the works of 31 local artists. Image and shop design by David Solow art + design David created a to-scale portolan chart of the Earth along the face of the bar, including the bar revealed when the training room door is slid open. The middle of the main bar features a compass rose that represents Durham in the center. In the training room corner, on the espresso machine module with a compass rose representing Addis Ababa, the anchor...
Each January we do an internal look back at our previous year in business, assessing our accomplishments and how to make our operation work better, how we can improve our workplace and better express our vision and mission. This year we had the additional need to untangle and consider our operation during the last 11 months of the pandemic, making sense of all of the adaptations, plans, scrambles, and expectations, and use that information to update our plans on how to get through another 10 or more months in safe mode. Y'all have supported and shown us so much love and we hope we've provided you and your loved ones lots of comfort! In order to get through 6-10 more months and keep...
We created our Warm Weather 2020 Wonder Menu by naming world heritage sites with deep and sometimes ancient historical significance that are important to all of humanity. Sites referenced spanned from the ancient cities of Balkh and Palmyra, to the Strait of Jabal Tariq (Gibraltar), to Teotihuacan. We named our signature pour over for one of the world’s liveliest squares, Marrakech’s Jemaa El-Fnaa, and another drink for Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory. Our drink, Palmyra, was a nod to the fact that Palmyra was at the Western end of the ancient spice routes, and that it came to prominence as a crossroads and trading center for caravans traveling from distant lands. The featured spices highlighted the multicultural influences that converged,...
Wonder is a word we use to refer to the spirit of what we're after in serving y'all. This spring in the chaos of covid-19 our communications specialist and Little Waves Coffee wholesale manager, Alyssa Noble, added the word vibrance to what we've been keeping on our minds through the spring and summer. This photograph came out of the desire to share both. Composite Photo by David Solow + Kristy Maney Herron We're sharing it with you now to set the stage for the wrapping up of our current wonder menu, and to launch our coming menu. It's going to be called "We're in This Together" and be a menu in which each item will be made via collaboration. To start...
I have some of my clearest thoughts as I wake up. Our new coffee series Discourse & Dissent came in a waking dream, thoughts surfacing on what patriotism means and freedom as something that needs to be asserted in order to keep its significance. As I awoke I was thinking that it is up to societies to decide, again and again, defining and asserting what Freedom means. For me, the 4th of July is a mark each year to consider this question. Being informed and engaging in vigorous discourse and dissent when one deems it is necessary is what the 4th of July is about. Examples: https://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm https://time.com/5614930/frederick-douglass-fourth-of-july/ https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945 . . Our first two choices in this rotating series of contrasting...
