I love Corporate America, I’ve seen all it’s ads. Like most people, I throw money at it with the hope that it will someday make me the epitome of the human species. I’m seduced by it’s brands, I’m smitten by it’s celebrities, I’m infatuated by it’s scandal.

But if you’re not Corporate America - i.e. if you own a coffee shop - and you decide to brand your cups, then you’re a generic hack.

There isn’t much logic behind that statement, I just don’t trust coffee shops with branded cups. I love Dunkin’ Donuts, and I’ve become lukewarm to Starbucks, but I don’t consider those to be ‘coffee shops’ (more like the cafe in the lobby of the Corporate America headquarters).

A real coffee shop is one of those places with the crooked screen door and the suggestive Marilyn Monroe poster on the wall of the men’s bathroom. A grey cat with one ear lounges around outside and no one knows who it actually belongs to (but it has become the unofficial mascot and helps keep the mice out of the basement). They offer exactly two types of biscotti and, on rainy days, if you stare at the outside of the shop at just the right angle, it looks strikingly similar to the Bates Motel.

The point is that a real coffee shop doesn’t have to be any of those things, but it can just as easily be all of those things…. There are no brand standards, there are no trademarks, there is no employee dress code, there is no need for consistent decor or even consistency. There’s autonomy in that - a freshness that transcends the rigmaroles of a typical work day.

If you brand the cups, then you add a certain structure to that freedom. The corporate mentality begins to creep in and you start to draw attention away from the thing that matters most…

No, not the cat - we’re pretty sure he’s rabid - it’s the coffee, you dope. It’s a coffee shop after all. Focus on brewing the best possible cup that you can.

And stick with the generic cups. They keep you unique.