For as long as I've lived, the city of Bartlett has been a dessert of local food and drink with little variety to offer in the industry. We have a steakhouse or two, countless Mexican restaurants -- two of them are quite good! -- and more than a few meat and veggie/mom-and-pop breakfast and lunch cafés. Then there's the rotating cast of cuisines jumping in the ring, fighting to turn the blighted old Pig-n-Whistle building on the corner of Bartlett Road and Bartlett Boulevard into a viable, robust business... The latest contender, Ragin' Cajun, recently tapped out. So, when I saw Baaloo Coffee Roasters' sign go up and the 'OPEN' placard in the door, I was keen to give them a go.
Baaloo have staked their Bartlett coffeeshop in what I remember to have been an auto-garage, long vacant. I have watched their progress for months and finally got to pay them a visit yesterday morning.
From the outside, Baaloo carries a modern industrial aesthetic and no longer resembles the car-shop it replaced. When I entered around ten in the morning there were only four other customers in the space: one was working "from home" on a laptop, the other was a woman with her two children. The floors are light marble or marble-patterned slab juxtaposed with a high, blonde wood-planked ceiling. A variety of seating is available: faux-marble-topped tables with leather-like-upholstered chairs; a vast, glossy-finished cross-sectioned tree trunk stands as a sturdy table for study-groups; in one corner is a similarly crafted coffee table and low, cushioned couches for casual hang-outs.
The interior's color palette is highly curated: blonde-to-tan woods, cool marble, dark (and sparse) upholstery; complimented by art-prints that, while vibrant, have the look of mass-production. The space is bright as day, cool in atmosphere, and quiet, but for the echoes of intermittent ordering, coffee grinders, or -- during my visit -- the chatter of children.
Just inside the door, one of the employees (among five or six standing together behind the counter) made eye-contact with me and we nodded our greetings. At the register my order was taken by a man I intuited to be the "guy in charge." He was friendly, knew the drink recipes and standards, answered my simple questions like, "how many ounces is your medium iced-latte," and "how many ounces of syrup go into your medium lattes? I usually prefer my lattes on the lighter-end of sweet," with competence. I ordered a medium (16oz) iced latte made with oat milk and light simple syrup and a cheese danish.
After ordering, I took a look around and quietly observed the staff with the next customers. The man who took my order, the "guy in charge", appeared to be the only person on staff with experience in customer service. He watched over one employee as they helped a customer with the enthusiasm of a coolly disinterested DMV agent on their fiftieth license renewal of the day. He stepped in a couple times to offset their monotoned ambivalence with a cheery, pride-in-his-work attitude. The trainee delivered lines like, "anything else" and "what can I get you" with the dispassionate personality that seems to plague people under the age of 25 today. It's a cultural trend among those only a half-decade my junior that I could harp on all day, so I'll leave it at this: they'll grow out of it -- hopefully before they weed out the sickly-sweet, warm and ready-to-spend Bartlett residents they are presumably trying to generate revenue from.
The monotoned and blank-faced service at the register was mirrored by the barista, who announced my completed order like the DMV agent announces the next number in line, placing it at the pick-up-point and leaving before I could thank them. The Guy-In-Charge has his hands full if he's to get these kids in working order. Godspeed to him!
The latte was good, perhaps not as good as the price valued it: about $7 with the oat milk and simple syrup. Though I asked for it to be warmed, the danish was overheated so it nearly burned my fingertips, and upon contact with my taste-buds it proved to be the first cream cheese danish I've ever eaten that had not even a whisper of flavor. It had a great flaky texture, but it was bland as can be.
Overall, Baaloo Coffee Roasters feels both anachronistic and at odds with itself. The vibe they have curated is one that's long-gone: cool, too bright, too airy, too much an upscale Starbucks, with consumer-grade store-bought syrups in pump bottles to boot. If the coffee is produced from the roots to the roast at your family's Ethiopian coffee farm, why soil it with sub-par syrups? All-in-all, their biggest challenge has less to do with any of their interior design or coffee choices than with getting their staff in shape to build recurring business. Again, Godspeed! read more
