LAWRENCE — Call it Caffeine Alley. The Perky Turnpike. Java Street. Coffee Row.
Soon, a quarter-mile stretch of Winthrop Avenue — aka Route 114 — will sport four coffee shops in a city once known for its four movie houses on Broadway in the 1920s — then called Theater Row.
Nowadays, near the Lawrence city line and Interstate 495 north on-ramp sits an established Dunkin’.
At its hip, minus the former Friendly’s cupola, comes Pressed Cafe, a high-end new kid on the block, the latest of eight such shops in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The so-called cafe will be drive-thru only. It was approved last summer by the Lawrence Zoning Board, whose members granted a variance for the storefront falling closer than 40 feet from the lot line.
Up the road and across the street from Stadium Plaza stands a Starbucks, there since 2018 at the former Showcase Cinema site.
And just beyond the trees and a block up the Winthrop rise is a second Dunkin’— a favorite of Lawrence High students.
That’s four.
Do we really need all this coffee?
Yes, we do, most New Englanders likely will say.
We drink iced coffee in bare feet in January.
We drain piping hot black coffee in sweatpants in July.
But will we continue to pay percolating prices, flirting with $3.50 for a basic large regular?
That’s a topic for another day.
For now, let it be known it’s $3.48 for a grande hot black at Starbucks; and $3.09 for a medium hot with milk and two sugars at Dunkin’ on the hill.
On a warm day this week, we asked a customer at the lower Dunkin’, the one by 495, if maybe we are overdoing it.
Our coffee habit, that is.
No, says Dani Baliani of Andover, though he does wonder why some people ply their cups with endless creams and sugars.
He drinks his coffee black.
He came to America at age 11 from Rome and returns regularly to his native land. Italians invented coffee culture, he says: “That’s where Starbucks got the idea.”
Italians adhere to strict coffee etiquette.
They drink cappuccino for breakfast, never past 11 in the morning. Otherwise, it’s espresso. No exceptions.
They shake their heads when they see Americans sucking down cappuccinos at all hours.
When in Rome, Baliani does as the Romans.
In New England, he does Dunkin’.
He comes here, to this Dunkin’ in particular, because the counter servers treat him like a regular.
He has his black coffee and sits at a window table with his lunch, which he brings in an insulated bag.
A few Dunkin’ employees here, on the other hand, are outliers in this coffee-loving land.
Karoa Coaubo says she has had her fill of coffee, iced or hot.
Faith Kooffreh agrees
“I don’t drink coffee,” she says. “We work around it all the time.”
Blasphemy.
Meanwhile, construction continues next door at the new Pressed Cafe, where on Wednesday fresh coffee-black hot top paved the parking lot.
Once it opens, drive-thru traffic will be contained on the property to keep it from backing up near 114, per the permit.
It will open where the former Friendly’s restaurant once served Big Beefs, SuperMelts and Fribbles to generations of New Englanders.
It’s not yet clear when Pressed Cafe expects to open or how many people they’ll employ. The owners, listed online as husband and wife Roi and Miri Schpindler, haven’t yet responded to an interview request.
They run eight locations: four in New Hampshire — two in Nashua and one each in Salem and Bedford; and four in Massachusetts — Boston, Burlington, Chelmsford and Newton.
That’s a drop in the cup compared to the almost 2,000 coffee shops in Massachusetts, more than 1,068 of them a Dunkin’, according to worldpopulationreview.com.
That is, in fact, the highest number of Dunkin’ locations in the country — with the exception of New York with 1,414. The Granite State has 218 locations.
Soon, travelers will be able to choose from four coffee shops in this slightly more than a quarter-mile stretch of Winthrop Avenue.
That’ll have to do, until number five arrives.
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