Coffee houses have been a community social hub for centuries. They not only serve coffee, tea and a variety of baked goods to snack on, but they are places where students go to study, where freelancers often times work to get out of the house, where people relax with a book, where you can get your daily dose of culture from a poetry slam or live acoustic show, or they can become a default meeting destination.
Coffee houses do more than serve coffee - they create an environment where you want to stay a while.
I've used coffee houses as a place to go in every single situation I listed above. I've also been to almost every single coffee house in Fort Collins to do so. Each place has their own style - in coffee and atmosphere. Some I like more than others for various reasons. I often go to Dazbog Coffee because it is so close to my house. I've had many work sessions there with my laptop and I've had a few meetings there as well. I'm not especially fond of their coffee, but their location is the biggest selling point for me.
Dazbog Coffee has two locations in Fort Collins, one on north Mason and the other down south in the Front Range Village shopping center by the library. It's a franchise company with about 31 locations throughout Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, Maryland, Arizona and California. I often think of it as Starbucks' little brother in comparison (although they are a Colorado-based company and certainly not even close to the size of Starbucks). They just have that corporate coffee feel.
I've had more drinks than I can count from Dazbog's south location - passion fruit teas, green teas, lattes, shots of espresso, flavored specialty drinks (like pumpkin pie) and more. Everything is fine - nothing extraordinary - and I've certainly had worse coffee in Fort Collins. It's an average cup of shoulder shrug with a milky froth of "meh" (although one of my friends swears by their KG Blend for home brewing). Their coffee has a super mild flavor, and I'm not fond of the fact that their large lattes only have two shots of espresso in them. Because of that fact (and not wanting to spend $6 on a latte), I tend to just get shots of espresso most often.
They have a few basic things to snack on - bagel's from Gib's, and microwaveable burritos and sandwiches sold by local vendors. Pretty standard and unexciting when it comes down to it.
The atmosphere is pretty cool with windows everywhere and garage door-type walls that retract in the warmer months to open the entire space. I love that - I think it's great! I also really like the art work and the gigantic painting of the cat hanging on the wall. It's huge, and I really enjoy admiring the millions of brush strokes it took to create it.
One thing that concerns me most about Dazbog is the public smear campaign about their customer service specifically aimed at the owner. There are a few disgruntled people in our community, and it's sort of difficult to tell if it's just one particularly miserable person, or an entire group forming to boycott the establishment (one or two reviews have valid concerns, the rest are all out revenge posts, seeming to be by only one person). All because of alleged confrontations where the owner asked people to leave for camping out at the shop and using the free wifi without purchasing anything.
Now, the signs placed at every table make me believe this is a problem, and I certainly understand where management is coming from. But I also understand that there is a tactful way to go about these issues. Who knows what the truth of the situation is, but it's disturbing to see "anonymous" reviews repeatedly plastered on every public forum, by what seems to be the same person who's on a hater mission.
So, leave it to your trusty, reliable and honest Fort Collins restaurant critic to give it to you straight. Their atmosphere is pretty cool, their coffee less than interesting, and in the countless times I've been there for various reasons, I've never had a problem (even the few times I've met there and didn't buy anything! GASP!). So, there you have it. Dazbog might not be my most recommended coffee house in Fort Collins, but I'll stop by there in the future if I need a caffeinated place to hang out close to home. Location, location, location! read more