Goals and Guidelines for Coffee Tourist

This blog starts out of a recommendation made to me after our family trip this summer to Montana (and back to Sacramento, CA). We had lots of pictures in our blog of the trip showing local coffee shops we had found along the way. Someone (I forget who) said we could write a guide to local coffee places.

For some reason, when we travel, our family tends to go local. First, it's pretty hard to avoid Starbucks where we live (a newer area with no local coffee shops), and we don't have any problem with chains, necessarily, but it's just nice to find someplace new and different (isn't that what travelling is about?). I also live in horror of going to the same places where I eat at home when I'm on the road. I mean what's the point to travelling if you're going to the same place and doing the same thing?

I don't think we travelled far enough to write a guide on our own, but I've got enough to start a blog and get submissions from others about places they have found. Here are the guidelines:

• It must be a locally owned, non-chain coffee store/bar/cafe. Non-chain means fewer than 5 outlets;
  
  
• It must be in a place that travelers and tourists are likely to be near, and fairly easy access. You may have a local place that is great, but if it's down two blind alleys and has no street parking, how are strangers from out of town going to get there?
  
  
• They must make a decent cuppa joe;
  
  
• Please try to be informative and, as I tell my students, use details.
  
  

Send me an email with your submission.