It is our hope and focus to always be open with the Two Story community regarding our business and our decisions. Like all businesses we should constantly be striving to enhance your experience within our doors. However, unlike many businesses, we truly want to ensure that we are striving for this—for you.

With this in mind, one of our greatest frustrations for you and us has been the Wi-Fi within Two Story. There is no hiding the constant drops in service, the inability for you to connect, our incapacity to accept credit cards, etc. As a community gathering place in this age, we need to be able to offer you a reliable Internet connection to ensure that you can study, work, check your emails, or stay connected with your friends when you are here and do this regardless of how many other Two Story friends and customers are also trying to do so.

We have made attempts in the past to add access points and replace hardware to fix the issue of “poor Internet.” We have even contracted out I.T. Professionals who have been unable to deliver and subsequently dropped the job. But, we believe that we have once, and hopefully, for all remedied this issue.

You may have noticed that in the past 3 or 4 weeks from writing this, that the Internet connection has been more stable and reliable. We finally found a piece of hardware through the help of Connected Technologies (a local I.T. Provider) that has been able to enhance your Wi-Fi experience greatly! Consequently, we have experienced zero (0) downtime on a whole!

We hope this has proven helpful to you and that you have been able to notice a difference. However, we are taking this one step further. We are partnering with Wandering Wifi, an Atlanta based Wi-Fi solutions company to bring an even faster, more stable, and more reliable hotspot to Two Story. Quite honestly, compared to your experience in the past month, we (Two Story) may be the ones to truly gain an advantage by making this switch to Wandering Wifi. They will be able to offer support and scalable potential for our Wi-Fi needs as our business grows and expands. It is a vital business relationship that we are thankful to have from this point forward. And we can expect the new Wi-Fi to be in place and functioning by the middle of March.

Partner With Us

We would like to ask for your help and support as well. One of the issues that arise for a business who offers free Wi-Fi is the tendency for patrons to utilize the Internet for hours without patronizing the business. Two Story has a unique house and location that makes it extremely conducive for studying and work, and this was our initial and current vision for Two Story. But, even a house this size has a tendency to reach capacity quickly.

Whether you are here only briefly or for a full day of studying, working, or socializing, please help Two Story by patronizing our coffee bar for food and drink.

It is our hope and strong goal to keep the Internet open and free to our community. When being faced with the decisions to charge for Internet or require our customers to retrieve a password at the bar to access the Internet, we are choosing to keep the Internet open and free at Two Story. While requiring each patron to visit the bar for a password would enhance our sales, we believe that it would hurt our mission as a community-gathering place, and our mission will always come first.

For this reason, we simply want to be able to offer this space, coffee, conversation, and community for many years to come. So, please partner with us by visiting our bar as you utilize this incredible space. I mean grabbing a cup of coffee can’t be that bad…

Chris

What are your thoughts on the Wi-Fi at Two Story?

For this reason, like most of our community, we enjoyed a holiday break ourselves this season.  We found rest in being closed from Christmas Eve until January 2.  In this time, however, our owner, Rob, did manage to make a few renovations to the end of the bar.  It seems that every time we close for a few days, we manage to renovate or improve some part of the house or bar.  We believe it necessary to keep moving and to keep improving.  There is always something we can do better, and our eyes are constantly in tune to find what we can do better and how best to improve upon this.

We hope that you come in soon and regularly to taste the new coffees as we make them available, to see the new faces in the house, or to experience the new renovations and improvements to the house.

We want to thank our regulars, coffee lovers, our community, our neighbors, our one-timers, our every-day-ers, our staff, and our friends for all of their support and love over our first year.

We look forward to 2010 and to all that it will hold for us as a coffeehouse, as friends and family, and as a community in Five Points.  You can bet that Two Story will continue to grow and adapt…and yes, you can expect a few more changes.

Check out our cupping notes from today’s cuppings :

Cupping Notes / 11.3.09

Everyone needs to try these coffees.  You may experience things that we were unable to pin-point.  Coffee is dynamic and ever-changing.  Each individual may experience or perceive coffees, flavors, notes, and smells differently.  Enjoying coffee is a journey…

Share your thoughts as they find you.

A Pulped Natural coffee has been processed using special artisan methods, whereby the farmer/producer will break from the traditional processing methodology to make a more daring approach to the finishing of the coffee.   In this process, the coffee is laid out to dry with the moist sweet mucilage from the cherry still attached to the seed. The result is a coffee that typically cups with characteristics of both a dry and a wet processed coffee.  Pulped Natural coffees often read as sweeter on the palette then most wet-processed coffees, yet somehow majestically retain the body of a dry-processed coffee.

This month we will be serving three rare Pulp Natural Coffees from three great countries, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.  Also, our Espresso will be a Pulp Natural Espresso Blend.

What is your favorite Pulp Fest coffee?

See you soon,

Chris

We’re trying to make August as big and as fun as we can.  To do this, we decided to host a long weekend of amazing music.  The energy in Two Story is hard to beat on nights where we host concerts or other events.  So, in efforts to amp that up, we are having a total of 6 artists play over the course of 3 nights on August 20, 21, and 22.

If you have been to a show at Two Story before, then chances are you will remember some of these names.  If you haven’t been to a show at Two Story before, then I encourage and invite you to come experience one or all of these 3 nights in August!

Thursday:  Fletcher/McTavish
Friday: Lauren Price, Rachel Farley, and James Patrick Morgan
Saturday: Mark Bailey, The Less

Doors will open at 8:00 each night with the show beginning around 8:30p.  $5 cover to get in at the door.  And we ask, please, that you visit the coffee bar for a drink.  I hope everyone can make it out for these nights.  Help us spread the word around town.

See you there,

Chris

Are you pumped?

Five Points in Athens is hosting the Five Points Art Fest today, which accounts for the longing vibe. Local artists and photographers are setting up to exhibit their works to the community on the front steps of the local businesses amongst historic Five Points.

This type of atmosphere is lovely to experience. Typically the summer months in Athens reveal a quiet, slow succession of months for local businesses and the locals homesteads in these neighborhoods as the mass of students files out of Athens to travel the world, study abroad, conduct mission work, or simply head home for the summer. However, it is events such as this that unite the local community together and help boost these small businesses and connect Athens with the artesian and specialty craft community.

Two Story is proud to host a location for exhibitors to display and sell their work. It is our hope that we can help foster an environment of open creativity and connection.

This is our first summer in Athens as a coffeehouse, so we are excited to see how things change for us and for our loyals and neighbors as these months progress forward to August and thus the return of the UGA student body.

Come out and support your local artists, your local businesses, and your new local coffeehouse.

Summer is here and the livin’ is easy at Two Story! We’re looking forward to lots of stuff goin’ on over the next couple of months. June 5th starts “Summer Stories” our summer reading program for 4-11 year-olds.  Over the summer, we’ve got Dance Nights and music and the Five Points Art Fest.  Even with the house a little more quiet and laid back with the majority of students gone for the summer, we still plan on having  busy couple of months with some great events.

Several of our staff have been out of the country and we look forward to their return, while others are getting ready to leave.  We also miss some of our regular customers who are travelling or working abroad and will be happy to see their smiling faces again.  To get ready for everyone’s return, we will be working on some renovations to make the upstairs even more useful for students and the downstairs even more conducive to connecting and conversation.

We did a few things different for this particular show. All of our concerts/music nights have held a different approach on some level of either the administration, logistics, layout, or artist selection, etc. Well, for this show, we tried a few ideas to see how well they would go over.

We removed all of the tables from the main room and flooded them onto the front porch and into our side “tree” room.

This worked out really well it seemed, as it let everyone really crowd in together and sit on the floor, on the chairs against the walls, and just stand and mingle amongst themselves. I really believe that it added to the social vibe that just seems to surface for these Invitation Nights.

For this show, we allowed artists to sell their CD’s. All of the CD’s moved! Some given away, some sold. But, the response from everyone in the house was big towards these musicians.

David Mikush opened things up with his playful and creative lyrics with a california, laid back sound. But, definitely don’t pin him into a corner. Clint Poy followed, with quite a following of his own. Jon Mark and Drew Dixon wrapped up the night, which lasted about 2 1/2 hours!

Nuçi’s Space passed out some stickers and spoke to the packed house a little bit about what they do for musicians in this city. A big thanks to them for being here last night!

We also had some fun with our Twitter Zone.

Tweet at us won’t you? Follow us on twitter @2storycoffee.

If I’m not careful, I was just spiral into a wind of “thank you’s.” But, we need to thank all of the guys who played. Thanks to David, Clint, Jon, and Drew. Check these guys out on their myspace pages.

Thanks to our Baristas, Mark, Scott, and Kelsey who handled the bar so well under such crazy rushes of free drinks!

Thanks to Nuçi’s Space for everything you do for the musician’s of Athens. I look forward to a great relationship with you guys.

Thanks to everyone who came out to hear some great music, enjoy some phenomenal coffee, and support a brilliant cause.

Alright, enough thank you’s, but know that they don’t really stop here.

We look forward to our next event night here at Two Story. Give us your feed back on what you want to see happen here. Talk to us.

What was your favorite part about this Invitation Night?

What:  Invitation Night Benefiting Nuçi’s Space
Where: Two Story Coffeehouse
When: May 1 @ 9:00p

This Friday, we are hosting another Invitation Night at Two Story.  If you have never experienced an Invitation Night at Two Story, this show will be an ideal introduction for you as we are doing something different with this evening.  All of the proceeds from the night will go directly to an Athens Nonprofit, Nuçi’s Space.

Four artists, David Mikush, Clint Poy, Jon Mark, and Drew Dixon, will be performing some of their original tunes as well as maybe 1 or 2 covers.  Normally our Invitation Nights are a way to give local singer/songwriters a chance to share their music and a chance for our community to hear some excellent talent (mostly underground talent).  The focus for this show remains that; however, the heart behind this evening will be to raise awareness and support for Nuçi’s as they provide a wonderful service and mission to the musician’s of this city.

Nuçi’s Space provides health and music resources to musicians suffering from depression and other such disorders.  Anything that we can do here at Two Story to help spread this mission further, we desire to do.  So come join us Friday, May 1 at Two Story to be a part of this night.

Chris