“How difficult is it to keep decaf stocked?”

That was going to be my entire post.

I went to get a cup of coffee the other day and they didn’t have any. It’s a common occurrence. They rarely have decaf. I probably wouldn’t mention it here, if not for the fact that I overheard some friends talking about the same thing last night. They, however, were considerably more upset about it. It seems that they’d called to ask whether or not they had decaf available before packing up their family and heading out. They were told that, yes, there was decaf, but, guess what?

Yup, they didn’t really have any.

And these friends of mine, who happen to work in customer service, weren’t too happy.

But, the coffee’s good when they have it, so we all forgive them.

The last two times I’ve gone in, they’ve told me that they “just ran out.” Call me crazy, but it seems to me that if it keeps selling out, it must be pretty popular. If that’s the case, it would seem to me that they’d find a way to keep it stocked. Somehow they manage to keep the regular coffee stocked, so it can’t be too difficult.

The more I think about it now, the more I think that maybe it’s on purpose. Maybe, as true coffee aficionados, they look down on decaf. Maybe asking them to pour a cup of decaf is like asking an owner of a fine wine to mix in some sugar and ice.

I was standing in line behind a guy at the brewery who ordered O’Douls (fake beer) once and I couldn’t contain my laughter. I don’t know how to reconcile it. Somehow it seems perfectly reasonable to me to laugh at someone asking for low-alcohol beer in a brewery, but I think coffee shops should carry decaf coffee as a matter of course, as though my anxiety problems are more deserving than someone else’s alcoholism.

But maybe it’s not coffee snobbery that’s keeping them from offering decaf. Maybe it’s business. Maybe they don’t want to encourage the drinking of decaf because it’s bad for the bottom line. Maybe they don’t want the business of decaf drinkers, because, on the whole, we’re not addicts. We don’t need coffee to live. The profit, I’m thinking, has to be in the real stuff, the stuff that people can’t not have. By not having decaf, they make it more likely that we’ll slip and fall off the decaf wagon with a resounding “caaa-ching”! Even if they just seduce one of us a week with their diabolical bait-and-switch, it’s got to be more valuable to them to have that one drinker of real coffee than a sporadic handful of people wanting the fake stuff.

In other Ugly Mug news, you may have heard that they closed down a little while ago to do some remodeling. And, they said, when the reopened, that they’d be smoke-free. Linette and I went in a few days ago with Clementine to get some coffee and check the place out. The changes were good, I suppose. Some of the quirkiness had been scrubbed away, but I didn’t find myself missing it all that much. They’d put down hardwood floors and a new coat of paint. And the awkward, old theater seats had been replaced with Ikea fare. It had a good, clean, open feeling, which I imagine might help them in their quest to bring good, artisan coffee to the people of SE Michigan.

For those of you who haven’t been there, they make damned good coffee. They take it really seriously. The guy who runs it, I’m told, is constantly grading his baristas on their form.

People love their coffee. And, in the past, I think people have always been willing to overlook the “we don’t need your business” attitude of the staff. People are willing to forgive a lot for a good cup of strong coffee. And it really is that good.

The current changes have people talking. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard it suggested that the current clean-up and smoke-out are part of a concerted effort to find a buyer for the business, freeing the owner up so that he can do something else. As to what he’d be doing post Ugly Mug, there are a few theories. My favorite is that he’s looking to get into the Thompson Block, alongside the new venture by Andy Garris that we’ve been discussing here. I think that would be pretty cool. (It hadn’t occurred to me until just now, but maybe the owner of the Ugly Mug is just cleaning stuff up now so that he doesn’t encounter the same kind of stuff that Garris is facing right now, as he tries to enter the Depot Town ecosystem with his Elbow Room baggage.)

I don’t know what’s up at the Ugly Mug, but I do know that they treat coffee with a respect not seen elsewhere in Michigan. True, they don’t often have decaf and customer service can be an issue, but both of those facts are more than offset by the quality of the product. If you’ve never been to the Ugly Mug, it’s worth a trip to Ypsi.