Coffee Shops Bring Community

I saw this article about a coffee shop called The Jidder Bean in a place called Connell in an area described as Tri-Cities Mid-Columbia. Keeping up with espresso coffee news is turning into a geography lesson too! Anyhow, it's yet another story I'm seeing played out again and again across the United States and the world: people look to coffee shops to build community. I guess that's why I hear about churches having "coffee socials" after their services. An interesting pattern so far, though, is that the coffee shops that appear in these kinds of articles are owner-operated, and in this case built with a lot of community involvement. I don't see stories like this about the opening of another Starbucks, or is it that Starbucks just hasn't reached these smaller communites yet and the locals are still waiting to be rescued by the big green logo? I know that you can get the "personal" treatment from Starbucks if you frequent the same store daily. One of my workmates picks up her caramel latte every morning at her local Starbucks in Ladera Ranch, CA, and she doesn't have to tell them her order or her name: they see her, and up comes her drink. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel a sense of community and belonging. She even gets her morning fix free of charge from time to time. I'm not sure if that's Starbucks policy or just something unique to this store, but it's the kind of treatment that's bound to buy loyalty and a sense of belonging. Anyhow, I personally am not looking to Starbucks for anything, mostly because every time I drink Starbucks coffee I see the drink being made in a way that just breaks all my rules for making great espresso coffee drinks, and literally leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Apart from breaking my golden rule for making great espresso drinks, I think it's the excess of scalded milk that does that in my opinion. I just hope that the local coffee shops mentioned in stories like this don't just try to become replicas of Starbucks, trying to beat them at their own game, which they won't. Rather, I hope they set out to change the way espresso coffee drinks are made in the United States. They could do no worse than to start with my golden rule to making perfect espresso.