Allies: The Third Place in Raleigh, NC

Rich made the following comment to the post “Why 95% of US Restaurants Suck and How We Learn Not To Notice”. I think it makes for an inspiring and interesting read.

Wow, that was such a fantastic essay that I just have to respond with my own 10-year experience as the owner of a restaurant/coffeehouse that went to extreme efforts to do exactly what your talking about.
The Third Place Coffeehouse in Raleigh, NC was created with a very strong philosophy that had a social component (a local gathering place for the community) as well as a quality component. I wrote a chapter in a book called Celebrating The Third Place that outlines the social philosophy that we religiously adhered to during my tenure as owner.

As for the quality component, everything in The Third Place was made or delivered fresh everyday; chocolate syrup for hot chocolate and mochas was made twice daily from high quality Dutch cocoa, cane sugar and hot water, whipped cream was made all day long from heavy whipping cream and monin vanilla syrup, chai was made fresh everyday from a homemade blend of anise, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, cane sugar, honey and high quality black tea, coffee was roasted and delivered three times per week, all of our produce was delivered daily from a local organic farmer, scones were made from scratch in-house every morning, cookies from scratch every afternoon, pastries and bagels were baked fresh and delivered everyday from local bakeries, seasonal fruit pies were sourced from local grandmothers(no joke-the best!), hummus and tubule were made fresh every day, soups were made from scratch every day. Our sodas were made to order from seltzer water and monin syrup. No corn syrup was allowed on premises. Our milk was delivered three times per week from Pine State Dairy until they went out of business. Even our paper goods were sourced from a local supplier, PFS, who we worked closely with in order to help them carry goods like java jackets so that they could supply all of the small, independent, local coffeehouses. US foods was used for mustard, mayonnaise and individual cream cheese packets. US foods insisted upon delivering when it was convenient for them and they usually blocked traffic on Glenwood Avenue during morning rush hour, causing lots of honking and shouting from the commuters I was trying to attract as customers.

The sandwich and salad menu at The Third Place was totally unique as a result of the limitations that we place on ourselves. This is an important point and I hope a few people are still reading this so that this point can be made. Sysco and US Foods offer such a huge variety of foods so that anyone can offer anything any time of year. As a result, everyone has the same exact menu. This seems counterintuitive since you’d think more options would mean more variety, but in truth, people are lazy and the menus all end up having the ubiquitous turkey brest sandwich and basic panini options. Since we were a vegetarian restaurant and we were working closely with local growers, we were forced to get as creative as possible with the ingredients that were available and so we ended up with creative home made spreads (sun dried tomato mayo, basil pesto aioli, etc) combined with roasted veggies, heirloom tomatoes, locally produced chevre cheese, homemade bean burgers, veggie BLT’s, a seitan reuben made with homemade sauerkraut, a signature sandwich called The Plethora that has become know as ‘muffalatta of Raleigh’ made from hummus, tubule, fresh roasted sunflower seeds, sprouts, havarti cheese, homemade pico de gallo, mustard vinaigrette dressing and 6 minutes in the oven. Every year the farmer we worked with would give us heads up on what was coming into season, and we would put our heads together to produce seasonal specials – organic mixed greens with strawberries and lemon poppy seed dressing, local fresh mozzarella with organic heirloom tomatoes and organic basil picked that morning and served on organic mixed greens, roasted pablano peppers served on 12 grain flat bread with a roasted garlic spread and chevre cheese……the limitations forced us to be creative and in the end the customer always had unique, healthy and delicious options to choose from. We even worked out a deal with our grower to buy bulk produce that was not nice enough for him to sell to restaurants, and we would use this produce for soup stock.

All of these measures took more effort than just ordering from Sysco, but the end result was an eye opening one for customers and an education for everyon in what good, fresh food tastes like. Local slow-fooders eventually found us and thanked us while busy professionals trying to grab a quick lunch scorned us and never came back. We made a choice about who we were and what we were all about and we never wavered from that, which is why I think we enjoyed the success that we did.

I have to say that in my job(sales rep for Counter Culture Coffee) the majority of people that I am running into are not looking at this option and when I mention to them that they could make chocolate syrup instead of using hershy’s or come up with thier own proprietary chai, I get blank stares and confused looks.

Food offerings in cafe’s are often an afterthought and it shows. An honest to goodness high-quality local independent coffeehouse is a true labor of love and the shortcuts that people take are glaring reminders to me that there is still a message out there that the coffee business is a quick and easy money maker. My goal in my current position is to gently dispel this myth, seek out the people who are going to do it right, and try to help steer them in the ‘quality is everything’ direction……unfortunately, the $6.00 24oz sugar-filled whipped creame topped frappe is a huge money maker.

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