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It’s the little things — a breathtaking 5:30 a.m. sunrise over the dirt roads I frequent on the 15-minute drive I take to my barista gig, the phantom pair of "mittens" I feel when cradling a grande cappuccino as I peer out at the bitter Colorado winter skies brewing outside my cafe's window, the nitro-shot-stained memories I share with my coworkers and the familiar footsteps of the Von Eschen family skipping into the Hover and Trade Cafe beaming under a pair of matching, jet-black aviator sunglasses — that leave me grateful for the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The Von Eschens are the type of customers that you can just tell are smiling from beneath their layers of over-worn pandemic masks. They are the kind that you can feel authentically laughing behind the smudged plastic barrier that stands between the customers in line and the baristas on the other side of the bar. The reason for the contagious joy this family of three effortlessly omits? They actively seek out, embrace and share life's little moments of joy even during their darkest days. And over these last few years, they've found those little moments of gratitude in the love and community they found at the bottom of two grande mochas and a barista-graffitied tall cup of whipped cream, which they order daily from the Hover and Trade Center Drive Starbucks Cafe in Longmont, Colo.  

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Now, I know my gratitude for the pandemic sounds peculiar but, for me, it is plain and simple. If it hadn't been for the COVID-19 pandemic, which ushered me into the Colorado State University student and Longmont resident commuter lifestyle, I never would have taken on my barista side-hustle at the Hover and Trade Cafe. Without the pandemic, I never would have become the coffee-aficionado (or addict depending on how you phrase it) I am known as today. Without these last few years of uncertainty, I wouldn't have bonded with the Von Eschen family or any of the other customers that I trade masked smiles and have brisk, yet monumental, conversations with each week. I don't take these minuscule interactions for granted anymore. They lift me up, inspire me and, as a once shy little girl, they have left me with heaps of unprecedented self-love. Working here has uncovered that I have always been an extrovert who was only borrowing an introvert's self-conscious reality. So a life without the COVID-19 pandemic is a life without my beloved Starbucks community and a life without a deep appreciation for the little things.

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I don't stand alone in this pandemic-sparked gratitude for the Starbucks brand either. During the first months of the pandemic, when safer-at-home orders were put in place, many of us sought refuge through Starbucks coffee shops. Small businesses faced an unprecedented pause to in-person interactions and corporate cafes with established drive-thru experiences and digital ordering services thrived amidst the tragedy. And when in-person business setups reopened, customers rushed to Starbucks cafes once again to interact with the caffeine-buzzed communities they so missed. According to Associated Press News, Starbucks stores across the nation hit record sales when cafe locations, like the Hover and Trade cafe, reopened for face-to-face business.

 

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For my favorite family of cafe regulars, the Von Eschens, Starbucks was the first place they ventured out to in March 2020, when the world shut down. Shannon Von Eschen said that this adventurous decision was fueled by a desire to experience a brief moment of normalcy and rediscover human interaction during a moment of mass isolation.

 

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“The first weeks into the pandemic, when everything was closed, we tried to drive out in town but there were like no cars on the streets,” Von Eschen said. "We went to Starbucks, a drive-thru one up in Longmont, and that’s kind of what started it all. For a long time, the one that you’re working in [Hover and Trade] you couldn’t go in, and that was kind of sad. We went up to the door the first day and were like what? it’s closed! It was fun for a while, going out, and then it just got creepy.”

 

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Von Eschen and her husband, Jason Von Eschen, are long-time Starbucks patrons. They began frequenting Starbucks cafes in the neighborhood in 2017, long before the COVID-19 pandemic when they started grabbing a cup of joe after attending church services on Sundays. The Hover and Trade Cafe was a convenient location for this now venti-sized tradition because the cafe is along the way of the family's drive home to Niwot, Colo. They fell into a five-year family tradition of ordering drinks, taking a picture of their feet gathered together in a family circle, which they posted to social media and picking up a pup cup for their then 5-year-old son, Eli Von Eschen. They found a sense of routine, family bonding and comfort in a cup of Starbucks coffee. Today, that same little boy is 10 years old. And that coffee-stained family tradition? Well, it’s still going strong. In fact, during the pandemic Starbucks coffee transformed into an everyday necessity for the family.

 

 

“It just became a thing,” Shannon Von Eschen said. “On Sundays we would go to church, stop at that Starbucks and then go to work. That church coffee craze became our whole life. We became addicted to it and during the pandemic, we decided only going on Sundays wasn’t enough.”

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“Oh, it’s never enough!” Eli quickly added. "We tried to take a break and it was terrible. Yeah, it's terrible. I can not go without a daily basis whipped cream!"

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“Jason and I are just very simple people, so we do not need a lot of variation,” Shannon Von Eschen said. “We literally have the same day every day. We get up, we get our coffee, we sit in our car, we enjoy our morning and then we get started with whatever work we are doing.”

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We baristas at Hover and Trade will never grow tired of hearing the chatty mother-son duo walking into our cafe. My coworker, Valorie Martin, and I first noticed the family visiting the cafe in the summer of 2021, which was when I began my job at the cafe. Whether it was the matching pair of mother and son aviator sunglasses, the over-complicated drink order (a double-blended, nine-pump, almond milk, mocha Frappuccino) they ordered daily for Jason Von Eschen or the sense of pure joy they always carried with them, something about their presence in our community stuck in the back of our minds like that lingering delicious smell of coffee that clings to a barista’s clothes after a 6-hour shift. The family said they too felt a sort of belonging, tradition and community visiting our cafe over the summer because of the baristas and the reintroduction of their preferred in-person cafe set up in early July.

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“It’s people like you that keep us going back to that specific Starbucks,” Shannon Von Eschen said. “Right Eli?”

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“Yeah,” Eli replied almost falling out of his seat with excitement. “We came and we met Liz, then we met Brayden and then we met you!”

 

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“I think Val was one of the first ones to kind of remember our names,” Shannon Von Eschen added. “She was like, hey it’s you again.”

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When I first began Martin ("Val") and I became obsessed with trying to figure out who the Von Eschens were. We bonded over these behind-the-bar speculations about our favorite daily regulars. We imagined the lifestyles of social media influencers or renowned CEOs of big technology companies. We even fanaticized about them being a family of traveling rock stars dependent on coffee to keep them up for late-night band rehearsals.

 

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Could you blame us? The family came in to visit us every day during the summer, they made an effort to remember our names and they genuinely enjoyed talking to us. Naturally, we thought that hiding behind those aviators were the eyes of the sweetest superstars around. As the summer months flew by, typing in the family’s complicated Frappuccino order became a breeze and they swiftly became some of my favorite store regulars. I learned Shannon Von Eschen’s name, memorized the family's order and started drawing on Eli’s cups.

 

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The first drawing I drew for Eli was my barista go-to — a tiny misshapen frog whose favorite pastime is wishing my customers a good day. At that point in our customer-barista relationship, I didn’t know Eli’s name. This made writing him a personal message difficult. The Starbucks Rewards account that they scanned each day to pay worked wonders for learning Shannon Von Eschen’s name, but that pesky thing failed to mention her son’s name. All I knew about the boy was that, like me, he would be starting school in person again. This meant that in a few months the family would only be able to visit the cafe on the weekends, and since I would only be working on Sundays during my junior year of college I would still get to see them regularly. So the tiny frog on his first hand-drawn cup wished him good luck at school and gave me an initial customer connection opportunity to tell Eli about my upcoming school year, in hopes of it making him feel a little less alone during his in-person classroom shift.

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The message meant the world to him, you could see it in his evergreen-blue eyes and you could hear it in the astonished “thank you,” he muttered to me the next day. I was drawn back. Flustered on the spot. I was bashfully unaware of how monumental this little moment would be for me in the months to come.

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You see, as I jumped back into my commuter-college-grind I've clung to the little moments at the Hover and Trade Cafe like seeing Eli light up when I hand him a personalized cup or a Shapri smudged Spinach Feta Wrap warming bag on Sundays. And when I first shifted from my summertime everyday-barista gig to my Sunday-clock-in pattern, I completely broke down. The thought of not seeing the community I had grown so attached to left me heartbroken. I couldn't believe that I wouldn't get to have sarcastic business-pitch meetings with Martin every day. That I wouldn't be there to help Jenny Balagna, one of my incredible shift leads at Hover and Trade, grab bags of espresso beans off the highest shelves as a designated "tall girl" of the crew. It was so strange to me that Eli's stunned thank yous would be limited to a once-a-week occurrence. It was a difficult shift, but the little moments of joy I experienced pushed me through it. 

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For the Von Eschens, this first message had a monumental impact on them as well. Eli felt seen, the family felt heard and given the last year of limited face-to-face interactions they endured, this small act of human connection was huge for them.

 

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“The first time Eli got a cup with his name on it, or a drawing or somebody at your Starbucks even remembered our names — those are the little things that are big to us,” Shannon Von Eschen said.

 

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“And the first time I got sprinkles on my cup I passed out,” Eli joyfully added. "You know what else happened? After you gave me the last sprinkles, the red sprinkles, the next day Liz got me the exact same cup with sprinkles! I was like what? Is Kaylee here? Like what the heck?”

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Today, Eli and I have formed an unexplainable bond through our 1-minute interactions and four-word conversations. When I visited him for this interview, he was eager to show me all the "cool things" he had been up to in the day. We went from a deck of magic cards that he uses to practice "a trick that no one else knows," to top-secret hiding places perfect for impromptu games of hide-and-seek in his backyard. The way the Von Eschens and I interact you would think we have known each other for years, but in reality, our cafe interactions just passed their five-month anniversary. 

 

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That sense of belonging and connection the Von Eschens feel toward the Hover and Trade Cafe and our baristas is something that researchers at Florida State University discovered rings true for cafe-lovers across America. This study interviewed 94 coffee patrons each from a different cafe to uncover the social importance of face-to-face interactions coffee shops play on people's lives. They found that each participant felt a sense of belonging and ownership to the coffee shops they were loyal to. Those coffee shops that you regularly return to offer more than a staple morning brew, cafes intertwine and connect you to the unique community you are surrounded by, and during this seemingly never-ending pandemic community connection is something we all cling to.

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“We are very busy, and I would say we could easily just go to a drive-thru every weekend, but we chose not to because we get to come in and see you guys,” Shannon Von Eschen said. “You know? When you have someone who can make your drink correct every time without asking for another one, we will go out of our way just for that. I’ve visited almost every Starbucks in this area and almost everybody knows us at all of them, but we know more of the baristas at Hover and Trade on a personal level and so we will always go out of our way to go there.”

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The pandemic was hard on small family-owned businesses across the nation, and the Von Eschen’s tree farm is no exception. For their business, the pandemic ushered in a new model of tree hunting and many supply-chain constraints. Shannon Von Eschen said that the constantly changing mask mandates and business regulations put in place over the last years have been a challenging adjustment for the family. 

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“It was difficult at first because we had to change our whole way of business,” Shannon Von Eschen said. “We redesigned everything here, we put up barriers outside and we put windows in so people could pay from the outside for their Christmas trees. There were so many rules. With our tree nursery in Boulder, we decided to essentially only be open by appointment, which really ticked a lot of people off. But it’s been two years of that now? And I don’t think we are ever going back...”

 

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The abundance of social-distance-inspired architectural redesigns they undertook to prep the farm for the 2020 Christmas season meant that the family of three kept busy and remained espresso-fueled during the safer-at-home policy social constraints. Their Starbucks tradition has been a welcomed distraction from the ever-changing rules and complications of a pandemic-ridden society. Yet, the family only sees the bright aftermath of those long nights and rough days they faced as small-business owners. Shannon Von Eschen said that she is actually grateful for the nursery's new appointment-based setup because it's helped her establish personalized experiences for customers visiting the farm—a change that exposed her to hearing more of her customer's raw life stories, which she adores.

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"I just think people are fascinating like every person has the craziest coolest story ever," Shannon Von Eschen said. "I wish I could sit down, drink tea all night in their house and listen to their whole life story. I just love that about people."

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Although labor shortages are the "bane of her existence" and her habitual daily Starbucks coffee run is becoming more expensive, due to supply constraints, Shannon Von Eschen is undeniably grateful for the irreplaceable family moments she lived during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even Eli, who faced three months of online schooling filled with spotty Wi-Fi, limited peer interaction and masked conundrums sees only the bright side of his remote experience. 

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“Nothing, and actually I liked it better,” Eli answered when I asked him what he missed about his in-person school during remote learning.

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"You did not! Wait, wait,” Shannon Von Eschen interrupted. “OK, he did like it, but he is kind of is just an easy child so it's sort of not really fair because I mean he just loves everything…so.”

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“Well, I could do this, I could say I didn’t get to play with my friends,” Eli interrupted. “But guess what? Between every single subject, we got like a 10-minute recess!”

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“They got a 10-minute break to get up or get snacks between each subject,” Shannon Von Eschen clarified. “You didn’t like when our Wi-Fi would go out and you wanted to answer a question. So, it’s probably better that it’s in person.”

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“Yeah it’s much better…but I still liked the recesses,” Eli said. “Because there’s like 500 subjects…there’s so many subjects!”

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The online semester also meant that the family had more time to embrace their Starbucks tradition and visit the Hover and Trade Cafe more often. The family said they are grateful for the Starbucks brand because it has been a constant source of community in their lives during such an inconsistent moment in history. During the pandemic, the Hover and Trade cafe has become a family tradition steeped in a familiar crew of outgoing baristas, classic mocha recipes followed to a tee and countless afternoons spent sitting in the parking lot of Hover and Trade sipping coffee and enjoying the little things in life as a family. 

 

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“For us, to go to a place and get a cup of coffee and sit in the car together, and to just have this tradition of doing that…it’s more about a ritual and less about the actual drinks,” Shannon Von Eschen said. “We go for the experience of coming in and seeing familiar eyeballs.”

 

 

So here's a toast to all the little things — like that cocoa-forward last sip of a grande mocha, the bitter notes of a consistently double-blended grande almond milk mocha Frappuccino, the ten sticky fingers you're left with after devouring a tall cup of extra whipped cream and, most importantly, a pair of barista-favorite smiling faces beneath matching jet-black aviator sunglasses stopping by the cafe on any given Sunday afternoon. Here's a toast to you, our rock star family of Hover and Trade regulars from those sets of "familiar eyeballs" who cherish all the little moments we get to spend with you. Thank you for reminding our community that even during the gloomy presence of a pandemic the little consistent moments sprinkled on top are worth the mess...no matter how sticky or covered in whipped cream we get discovering them.