How the Pacific Northwest Became the Birthplace of Roadside Espresso Stands

Over the past decade, Washington State has seen a steady increase in transplants, with between 38,000 and 98,000 newcomers arriving each year. These migrants come for various reasons, such as natural beauty or tech jobs. Often, they notice drive-thru espresso stands on highways and parking lots. These small, temporary coffee shops, often positioned in small corners of parking lots or next to gas stations, are a popular attraction for newcomers. Despite their small size, these small, temporary establishments are a significant part of the local economy.

Espresso stands, which have become a staple in the Pacific Northwest, have gained popularity due to their unique blend of coffee culture, car culture, weather, and convenience. The first drive-thru coffee shop in the U.S. was Portland’s Motor Moka, which opened in 1990. However, the appeal of getting a little coffee treat without leaving your car endured, leading to the rise of espresso stands.

Espresso stands typically offer a wide variety of flavored syrups, such as Torani brand, and often advertise drinks that taste like Snickers, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or s’mores. They also typically offer something called “white coffee,” which is made from beans that are roasted very lightly and retain more of their caffeine and are less acidic than normal beans. This type of coffee is made from beans that are still so hard that they will damage normal blade or burr grinders, so Ootopia Coffee Roasters grinds them on site with an industrial-grade machine.

Espresso stands also serve energy drinks (Red Bull or Lotus brands, normally) with flavored syrups, sometimes topped with whipped cream, a genre of drink really intended for health care workers on long shifts or students cramming for finals week. These drinks are big, cold, sweet, and sharp; they taste like a doctor telling you to stop drinking them. And espresso stand customers love them.

Katie Briola, who has worked at the Muddy Waters stand in Seattle for two decades, started working at espresso stands for the freedom it gave her. Many of these places are staffed by a single barista, with no manager looking over their shoulder or telling them what music to play. But what she came to value about her job was the relationships she built with her customers. She started working at an espresso stand alone because she got to meet so many different kinds of people, from struggling single moms trying to do two, three jobs at a time and needing extra caffeine and a treat for themselves up to people who work for financial institutions or Bill Gates.

Working at an espresso stand alone isn’t always easy. Last September, Briola was robbed at gunpoint, the third time in two years the stand has been robbed. Some customers can say “stupid shit,” like sexual come-ons or comments about what she’s wearing. But Muddy Waters’s customers rallied around Briola when she lost her first husband two years ago. When she remarried, one of her regulars officiated the wedding in their backyard. “It’s going to make me cry how much they’ve done for me.”

Espresso stands can be attractive businesses to own because the leases are more affordable than full-scale coffee shops, stands require very few employees, and the main ingredients in drinks are all shelf-stable. This business model is able to stay afloat with really low sales, as long as the main ingredients are shelf-stable.

Briola agrees that it’s more common to see women working these businesses. People get on guard when a guy is working at one of these stands, and people don’t warm up to them. She’s hired men only to have them quit on her. “It doesn’t work out for them,” she says, maybe because they can’t handle the isolation of working solo in a tiny space, maybe because they can’t deal with the stress of making drinks while simultaneously taking orders and keeping the area somewhat clean. “It can be very overwhelming for people who don’t know how to multitask.”

In the late 1990s, there were hundreds of espresso stands across the Pacific Northwest serving similar drinks, often staffed by young women. Some turned to sex appeal as a way to stand out, leading to the birth of “bikini espresso,” which was a misnomer as baristas typically wear lingerie or other revealing outfits. The trend became so ubiquitous that the Seattle Times reported on it in 2007.

The espresso stand industry is evolving from its ramshackle, sometimes skeezy, roots. More male baristas are now seen, and the industry has become slightly more corporate, with chains like Bigfoot Java and Gravity Coffee spreading across the region. Larkin’s Wolfe Club is trying to compete with these chains by making as much as possible from scratch, roasting its own beans and making its own syrups, and even its own “energy drink.”

The next wave of espresso stands may follow Wolfe Club’s lead and compete based on how their drinks taste or lean into social media, as toxic-colored energy drink concoctions look pretty good on Instagram. They must compete with each other and with Starbucks, who has massively expanded its drive-thru operation all over the country. Gone are the days when a drive-thru latte was a Pacific Northwest novelty.

However, there is still a place for these petite, idiosyncratic stands. Customers come to these stands because they catch their eye from the road, have a flashy and colorful atmosphere, or have a ridiculous name like Joltin’ Jeff’s Java. They come back day after day, not because they serve the best coffee around but because they like the same barista, the one who asks about your day and seems to mean it. The name and the barista become synonymous, and the stand no longer seems like an anonymous piece of sprawl but a beacon, a marker, and a place to stop and rest for just a few minutes on your way to wherever you are heading next.

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