Fourteen years ago, the bikini barista concept was born on Puget Sound.
The idea began percolating with the short shorts worn by baristas at Natte Latte in Port Orchard, Washington as early as 2001—actual bikinis came in two years later at Cowgirls Espresso (with 13 locations throughout the Seattle/Tacoma area) during a harsh summer heat wave, and were in fact the result of a request put to the manager by the baristas themselves, who complained of being too hot in the stand. As any aberdeen escortguide.co.uk employee will vouch for, working in as few clothes as possible certainly has its advantages.
Of course, business took off. But the heat wave passed, and as the years went by, so did the novelty. Yet in 2013, the website bikini-baristas.com, which was developed to provide a complete listing of these types of stands in Washington, Oregon and Idaho (along with a handy “coffee speak” glossary), listed 131 stands in the region. 11 of those—more than any other city—were to be found in Seattle, which, the website noted, “is at the forefront of the entire bikini barista phenomena (sic).”
So why has the bikini barista concept proliferated so well for so long in a socially progressive city like Seattle?
For one, competition. In a city defined by its sheer number of espresso joints, drive-through stands are a cutthroat industry, and that industry as a whole was, when the bikini concept first developed, facing overwhelming pressure as a result of Starbucks’ breakneck growth. As bikini barista stands spread to other nearby communities during the aughts, non-bikini establishments were frequently forced to either join the crowd or sell their businesses, often to their bikini-clad competitors. And while one would expect that a coffee-savvy region would soon look past a gimmick that attempted to substitute for coffee quality, customers both male and female have argued that the quality of coffee is as good at bikini stands as at other drive-through stands.
A second, counterintuitive factor is the weather. While residents of a place like Los Angeles can walk the waterfront to see bikini-clad beachgoers any day, the Northwest climate doesn’t support the same. Though the bikini espresso concept did spread to California, several of the stands there closed soon after they opened.
Both of those factors notwithstanding, the concept got plenty of negative national attention last year when Carmela Panico, owner of five Everett bikini stands, plead guilty to $2 million worth of money laundering and running what amounted to a prostitution ring through her stands. All five stands were turned over to the city of Everett in September; meanwhile, other popular stands including the original Natte Latte, Shoreline’s The Sweet Spot and Bellevue’s Hot Coffee Company have closed as well.
Whether negative publicity and closures continue in the next year or two will determine how much staying power the concept truly has in the area.
