PRESS RELEASE : 2022 US Trip – Day 7 (Roastology in Richmond)

I got a little enthusiastic in terms of the number of photos that I took at the Hollywood Cemetery and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, so my next priority on my Richmond tour was to find somewhere to charge my phone. And this looked like a suitable location on W Cary Street.

The service counter and I have to confess that ordering coffee in the United States is far more complex than in the UK. Coffee is just as often served cold as it is hot, so I have to remember to order a hot latte, then remember that regular milk is not a useful answer as there are multiple dairy and non-dairy options, with other questions usually coming in about how long I want things to be brewed for, whether I want something dripped and so on. Anyway, I ordered an Americano as that means I don’t have to answer lots of questions and potentially get muddled up.

One thing that I dislike, of which there are actually many, is when coffee shops ask for your name when taking the order. It constantly fails as a process and I like that many locations now have alternative ways of dealing with that. A number strikes me as far better, it gets rid of any chance of mis-spelling or mis-pronouncing names. And, of course, the system failed here with three of the five orders I saw having a disconnect between the name they called out and the name that the customer was expecting to hear. I never heard my name, so goodness knows what they’d been calling out. I stood and looked confused, in my best British way, and the server asked what drink I had ordered. That was a better system, she then found my drink.

There were charging points all over the place in the coffee shop, which was mostly busy with a slightly younger clientele reading, working or meeting with friends. The coffee was entirely acceptable, but I mostly pleased to have a full charge again. There were a variety of seating options including sofas, tables inside and outside as well as the high benches which I like. There was also wi-fi available to save my data and it’s the sort of laid-back and on-trend place that I could have stayed in for some time if I wasn’t mid-way through trying to rush around the museums of Richmond.

It was also handily located near to the bus stop so that I could get back into the centre of Richmond, all for free.