Word to Intelligentsia

Dear Head Honcho of the Millennium Park Intelligentsia Coffee Bar:

I love your coffee – but please sell it to me faster in the morning.

I live and work within blocks of the Millennium Park store and since you’ve opened have frequented it 7 days a week. I chose your store over the Starbucks on Madison, my former neighborhood coffee haunt, since you have better coffee and frankly better service. But your pace is glacial in the morning! Admiral Bird glacial. Titanic glacial. Mt. Rainier glacial.

I usually arrive before 9 a.m. in the upstairs store and generally wait 10 minutes or more between walking in sleepy and walking out caffeinated. At Starbucks, even with a long line, I’ve never had to wait more than five minutes for my fix (one thing to be said for corporate empires, they know how to crank).

Yet at your shop, this morning I waited ten minutes on a line of two people, me being one of them. I watched with envy as two other coffee prospects entered, waited, wilted, and bolted for the door sleepy but still on time for their morning appointments. Too black-gold addicted to leave, I waited dutifully and inwardly recited a small prayer to Kali, goddess of time, in hopes that she would annihilate some of the wait, or at least the person in front of me.

Now, I know you still have to work all the kinks out. But my time is precious in the morning, and even though I would, maybe a little bit, consider crowning you the king of all coffees over Peets (after all, you have three local stores to their lonely little one), I can’t wait 10 minutes in the morning for my traditional cappuccino. Much less my spinach and feta croissant, although thank you for the meat filled croissant you secretly offered me on Wedensday -- the early-morning walk back to the store to trade it in for my real order was pleasant and refreshing.

I have also noticed that many people seem to quiz your cashiers about what your products are, slowing things down considerably, and I wonder whether your menu signs are just not obvious enough or in large enough type. I dig the curvy, artsy font. I don't dig having to stand on a chair to be able to read it. Though it was a pretty mod chair.

And those eager, earnest, erstwhilers you have running your register in the morning. The veritable personification of friendliness and befuddlement. Their pleasant smiles go a long way to soothe my anger at being asked for the third time what milk I want with my au lait as they remain nonresponsive to any evidence that a line of restless natives, cell phones in place of spears, is mounting back towards the doors.

At Starbucks on Madison, I’ve regularly had to sit through the parade of the homeless men who need to pee, the bawdy revelry of CTA bus drivers telling all within earshot about their nonexistent sex lives, and the dance of the chairs and tables from day to day as no one who works there bothers ever to put anything back in its normal place. But I may have to go back to dealing with all of that in order to get to work on time.

Don’t you know, if you want my business in the morning you’re supposed to fit into my schedule, not the other way around? So, please, please, in the name of all that is holy and roastable and with all due irony, please try to be a little more awake in the morning. I recommend a double-shot black cat espresso with panna just before you unlock the revolving doors each morning.

And little labels on the veggie croissants.