Coffee House Rules

Chalk one up for the little guys…or gals, in this case.

Carter’s Coffee Bar gets its second location (Carter’s 2, Electric Boogaloo? I guess you have to be a certain age to get that joke, which I wear out) after some study, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But did the new Sonic going in on the north side of 14th and Broadway have to go through a secondary step of a Traffic Committee review? I applaud Alderman Jeff Bergman (R-2nd Ward) for looking out for his constituents in the Carter’s case, but if you’ve been to the Hannibal Sonic, you’ve seen that sometimes the traffic there hangs out into McMasters Avenue (also known as U.S. 61).

The Quincy McDonald’s at 13th and Broadway also has drive-thru traffic bleeding into Broadway sometimes during the noon hour. People just go around it.

I’ve never seen a line stretch from the Starbucks’ drive-through into Broadway, but I have seen it loop north to Qdoba before.

In these cases, these franchises were all given a pretty quick blessing by the City. But Carter’s had already demonstrated its surprising success with the 3815 Maine location and City Planner Chuck Bevelheimer had some regrets when traffic was backed up both directions and blocking driveways to neighboring businesses.

Maybe Carter’s Broadway location will take some pressure off the Maine location. Or maybe the staffs of Blessing Hospital and Quincy Medical Group will double Carter’s profits with the close proximity to the two largest employers on the city’s West side.

And Mayor Mike Troup said he believed this was a better move for the neighborhood than a C-store or a liquor store, which is ironic since Adam Booth owns that property, but opted to put his second Liquor Booth location at 35th and Broadway.

Either way, it’s nice to see a small businesses like Carter’s and Liquor Booth take off like this. It’s the kind of story we should all be applauding as we try to compete with Big Booze, Big Boxes, Big Tech, Big Media and Big Coffee.