Have you wished everyone a Happy New Year yet? I’ve also seen a few reminders that it’s also the start of a new decade.

Coffee In The Community

The New York Times profiles Hot Chocolate Sparrow, a coffeehouse in Orleans (Massachusetts). The thriving local business employs 40 year-round workers and 50 in the summer. Just how good is business these days? On a good day, the Sparrow opens at 6:30 a.m., and serves 600 coffees and fills 160 candy orders until 9 p.m.

Coffee chats are a popular way to engage with the community. Dave Mingus, Mayor of East Peoria (Illinois) has been holding his weekly coffee chats at Eysal’s Coffee Roasters. Starting a year ago, the coffee meetings are held every Wednesday morning.

Meeting more people and cultivating those relationships formed through the event will continue to be a priority for the mayor, who would like to see the Wednesday discussions expand at other locations.

[ via Chicago Tribune ]

Coffee Innovation

Wishing you had a third hand to carry your shot of coffee? Check out this neat Do It Yourself trick to make a magnetized coffee sleeve. Blogger AP from New York City came up with this simple yet useful idea.

[ via LifeHacker ]

The modern military may be a large bureaucratic machine that overspends on everything, but the grunts, the boots on the ground, are a pretty inventive bunch. Faced with equipment and supply shortages, soldiers can pretty much work around anything to get what they need. Like, for example, using C4 plastic explosives to heat up a cup of coffee. Now that’s something that you should really not try at home, folks.

Filed under: Community

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