Coffee shop gets creative

Red Eye Coffee owner Gregg Carey prepares a shot of espresso to show how espresso and milk are added together to make latte art.
Photo by Courtney Smith/Edited by Jordan Stover

By: Courtney Smith

What: Thursday Night Throwdown
When: Tonight, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Red Eye Coffee, located in the Bottleworks building on Prince Avenue.
Cost: $5

Coffee, competition and chess. Bottleworks-area coffee shop Red Eye Coffee is bringing together these three ingredients to create what he hopes is the perfect recipe for cash and community.

In an effort to muster up business and give customers a different kind of coffee shop experience, Red Eye Coffee owner Gregg Carey holds weekly barista throwdown competitions and chess nights to help his customers get to know one another in a comfortable and inviting environment.

“I want to create the kind of coffee shop that I would want to go to,” Carey said. “Most places around town are kind of get 'em in and get 'em out. They have this 'take your espresso and get out of here' attitude or everyone has their computer out typing away and no one talks to each other.”

Carey says he wanted to smash the idea of the quiet and isolated coffee shop and model his business after the bustling espresso bars in Europe where coffee is not just a drink, it is an art.

“I wanted my coffee shop to be a social hub where people can come and meet each other and talk or play games together,” he said. “A coffee shop should be based on customers and coffee as the most important things and the barista throwdown is about not only making the coffee good to drink but also nice to look at like a piece of art.”

According to Carey, the object of the barista competition is to mix the espresso and milk in such a way so that it creates a picture out of the different colors of foam.

“I am actually not very good at latte art myself because it takes a lot of practice but its kind of a fun thing for people to learn how to do and play with because, to my knowledge, no coffee shop in Athens does it so it is new for most people,” he said.

Depending on how the cup is swirled and turned when mixing the espresso with the foamed milk, the picture created can be anything from a heart to a palm leaf or intricate flower, he explained while showing pictures of expertly designed lattes on his computer.

“I think I would actually feel bad drinking that,” Daniel Grace, a psychology major from Macon and the sole customer in the otherwise empty building, said. “I really dont know if I could, I would feel guilty that the counter girl went through all that trouble to design it and then my first sip destroys it.”

According to Jittery Joes' employee Sean Lovell, such a community mentality coupled with group events is exactly what keeps customers coming back to the same coffee shop everyday and what has made Jittery Joes such a success.

"It [holding events] definitely helps business;" he said, "it builds a sense of community and gives the customer a distinct memory of a place so they're more likely to come back."

It is Carey's hope that students returning to Athens for summer session will want to participate in these events with their friends and that the events will build his customer base so that his business will be able to survive and reach the potential he dreamed about when he first opened 6 months ago.

Edited by Jordan Stover