Daily Movement

As I sit in the Starbucks in Mountain View, with 19% signal strength of Google’s Wi-Fi compared to 65% signal strength of T-Mobile, it’s clear you get what you pay for. I doubt they’re serious about actually getting wide coverage - rather just enough coverage to be useful some fraction of time and to get press interest. They are not yet at the level of Verizon (”can you hear me now?”) or any other hotspot service provider.

Soon Starbucks will be offering Wi-Fi for free, so what me worry? Looks like the actual cost of Wi-Fi is actually going to approach the marginal cost of Wi-Fi. Maybe the next phone I get will run VoIP to take advantage of the Starbucks internet.

So you say there’s no such thing as a free coffee? Here’s such a thing:

  From:   Harkins, Jr., Robert M.
  To:     address removed to protect the innocent
  Subject:        Invitation - Grand Opening of Coffee to the People

My family is opening a new coffeehouse called Coffee to the People at 1206 Masonic Ave (& Haight St.) in the Haight-Ashbury. The grand opening runs July 23 - July 31. You are invited. This e-mail serves as a coupon for one free 12 oz. coffee. Just print it out and bring it to the celebration.

We are trying to get the word out around town, so please feel free to forward this message to whomever you think might be interested. The coupon is good for anyone who brings it in. We’re prepared to give away a lot of free coffee, so don’t worry about distributing it too liberally. Thanks.

More about the coffeehouse: Coffee to the People is bringing power to the people through coffee, serving only the highest quality organic coffees and teas. All of the coffee is fair trade certified, and a portion of the profits go to charities benefiting the environment and social and economic equality. The coffeehouse has free wireless Internet access, its own living room, and a library of interesting books to peruse.

(About this e-mail as a coupon: Offer expires 7/31/05. Limit one per person. Not good with any other offer.)

Best Mochas

• Cafe Strada, College@Bancroft, Berkeley. Normal mocha (non-bianca mocha) is good. They were one of first to make the white (bianca) mocha in the early 1990s.
• Bean There, Steiner@Waller, San Francisco
• Tartine, Guerrero and 18th, San Francisco. Scharffenberger chocolate and Horizons organic milk. Need I say more?

Worth Mentioning

• Peets - differing tastes among stores. They use a dark chocolate syrup.
• Never Too Latte, San Bruno Ave, San Bruno, CA sweet, but not too sweet.
• Planet Coffee, East 14th Street, San Leandro. uses ghiradelli chocolate. It’s kind of like Royal Grounds in San Francisco. Other reviews
• Half Moon Bay Coffee Company. The way they put chopped almonds and whipped cream on their mocha reminds me of Kepler’s Cafe in Menlo Park.

Bad Mochas

• Most Barnes & Nobles - watery, like chocolate milk + coffee instead of thick chocolate syrup + sugar + coffee. Their eggnog latte also tastes like watered down eggnog.

Hyped Mochas

• Eustachio in Roma, Italy - regardless of the self-touted reviews posted on the wall and the endorsement by the Rough Guide Italy, the mocha there does not taste significantly better than anywhere else in Rome. At 5 Euros, it doesn’t win on price either.

Re: http://www.livejournal.com/users/foofers/133523.html

I haven’t yet visited the e-Mocha cafe yet, but I have had my eye on it for a few weeks, waiting. The sign has been up for a few weeks before the store was actually open which is good advertising. I would cut them a little slack since it was their first week — and I say that mostly because i live in union city and want such a place to succeed if it can. If this was say, San Francisco or Palo Alto, I would have higher expectations about their getting up to speed quickly and would be surprised if such a place would actually stay in business more than a year — failure there would be more because of available alternatives than poor service. It could be that the store owners are new at it and have a grand vision but haven’t worked out the service details. Calling it ‘beta’ is a good analogy. As long as it seems they are learning from (and open to) customer feedback, I expect they will get it right in the niche they are addressing.

Three different people, four different experiences.

First person (Amanda), great mocha first time, weak latte style mocha the next time. I think the chocolate was lying towards the bottom, not mixed up.

Second person gives a latte instead of a mocha and then corrects it quickly by pouring chocolate into it.

Third person prepares a great mocha.

Fourth person charges for a large but prepares a medium. Otherwise good mocha. Wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. Wrote out a ‘free mocha’ coupon.

Fifth person prepares a great mocha.

Update for 2004-10-18:
They now have a stored value, points card for rewarding repeat purchases.

Update for 2004-11-29:
They seem to have laid off some of their barista staff — there are only two people that seem to be regularly there. There’s a help wanted sign in the window. One person mentioned they were only trying to hire people who have prior experience.

I have drank a lot of mocha but the best so far has been the one that Peet’s coffee makes. Their barista told me this morning that they import the cocoa and mix it themselves. The recipe is 1 part cocoa, 1 part sugar and 1 part water so that it isn’t too sweet. He thought they imported it from Central America, but he said it definitely wasn’t a domestic brand of cocoa. Runner-up for a great mocha is the caffe moka from the Mediterraneum Cafe on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley. Both of these have a strong chocolate taste and the roast of coffee doesn’t require sugar to cover up a bitter or burned taste, although whipped cream always helps.

1 tablespoon cocoa, 1 tablespoon sugar and about 1/2 cup milk makes a good mixture.

I’ve used Droste cocoa from Holland with good results.