Love is Greater Than …Life through a lens of love and hope

The Facts:
Location: Downtown Latté is located on St. Claire near Lafayette
Hours: Monday – Friday: 7am – 5pm, Saturday: 9am – 3pm, Closed Sunday
Initial Price: $2.25
Refill Cost: Free
WiFi: Free
Fair Trade Options: All coffee is Fair Trade certified
Organic Options: All coffee is Organic

Twitter-sized Review:
Free refills. Free WiFi. A bit expensive upfront, but worth it for all Fair Trade/Organic coffee. A little cramped, still comfy. Score: 8/10

Completely Opinionated Review:
Again, in the interest of fairness this is not my first visit to Downtown Latté. It’s always been on my radar as a nice little coffee shop downtown, but I have generally stayed away for a couple reasons I’ll list below.

First, this coffee shop has a great location in the heart of the warehouse district. Unfortunately, it’s location comes with a price, and that price is having to pay for parking. Toledo meter-maids are notorious for always being around the second your parking meter time expires too, so don’t mess around. Pay the meter!

Upon entering you are greeted by a decent sized seating area, however they have done all they can to stuff as much seating as possible into it. There are some areas in the middle where seat backs touch each other, and I have to imagine it would be anything other than comfortable when it’s particularly full. I would feel very comfortable holding client consults here during the day, I would just be hoping against hope that my meeting time was during an off hour.

Asking for my house cup of coffee, I was handed a porcelain cup (three shops in a row!), and pointed to the self-serve air pots. The upfront cost here is the highest I’ve paid yet at $2.25, but Downtown Latté makes up for it by allowing free refills. Additionally, all their coffee is Fair Trade certified and Organic, which is a huge bonus.

The seats and tables themselves are comfortable, and I could certainly spend hours at a time here. Opening my laptop I am greeted immediately by free WiFi. Unfortunately like Georgette’s, they close relatively early (5pm weekdays), making evening client consults an impossibility. I do have a small gripe about the porcelain used, a pretty small cup (not a mug), and a dainty little plate. This seriously looks like a tea set out of Victorian times, and there is NO way I can drink from it and still feel an ounce of manliness.

Thankfully, the coffee is tremendous.

Final Grade:
8/10 – Downtown Latté is a great little coffee shop, with a few small issues of which at least one is outside their realm of control (paid parking). I admit the porcelain cup thing is an issue on my end (but since this is my review and opinion, I count it!), so really my only two knocks are the cramped seating area and closing early. The high cost of a cup of coffee is made up for with free refills of Fair Trade and Organic coffees.