Fifteen local coffee shops band together to remind Wichita it’s almost time to vote
Starting today, coffee drinkers across Wichita will start getting colorful reminders that it’s almost time to vote along with their morning (or afternoon) caffeine fix.
A project by the Wichita Community Foundation that was spearheaded by Reverie Coffee Roasters owner Andrew Gough has created special coffee cup sleeves that have been custom made for 15 different coffee shops around Wichita. The sleeves feature artwork by Hannah Scott depicting a red elephant and a blue donkey hopping through the word “Vote.” The date of the election — Nov. 3 — is conveniently printed along the bottom.
On the other side of the sleeve is the logo of the coffee shop that is distributing the sleeve and a QR code that will link people to public radio station KMUW’s “Election Blueprint” coverage.
The participating shops, which include Leslie Coffee Co., Churn & Burn and Espresso to Go Go, started distributing the sleeves on their to-go cups on Thursday morning, and they’ll continue to do so until Election Day or until the sleeves run out, whichever comes first.
“Because elections are a fundamental purpose in our society and our responsibility, and because coffee shops seem to attract conversation and are kind of like a breeding ground for ideas and thoughts, it just made sense that we would help to promote the election through something people love, which is a cup of coffee,” Gough said.
Gough said he was planning to make the sleeves for his own shop and was talking about the project one day when Shelly Prichard, president and CEO of the Wichita Community Foundation, happened to be at Reverie.
She asked him if he’d consider expanding the project to include other coffee shops around town and said the foundation could foot the bill for producing the sleeves. Gough got to work contacting as many other coffee shop owners as he could.
Many agreed to participate: You can see the full list of involved shops below.
“Getting the information around is important,” Gough said. “If we can convince one person to scan the QR code on the sleeve and learn something about the process of the election, we’ve done our job.”
Gough said he has a couple of extra cases of sleeves that don’t feature a particular shop’s logo that he can distribute to shops that didn’t sign up initially.
Here is a list of the participating coffee shops:
The Donut Whole, 1720 E. Douglas
Leslie Coffee Co., 930 W. Douglas
Reverie Coffee Roasters, 2202 E. Douglas
Placeholder Coffee, 120 E. FIrst St.
Little Lion Café, 2721 E. Central
Fairmount Coffee Co., 3815 E. 17th St.
Ecclesia Coffee & Community, 7130 W. Maple
Sunflower Espresso, mobile coffee truck
Churn & Burn, 11414 E. Central, 548 S. Oliver
Watermark Books & Café, 4701 E. Douglas
Want Bierock Company & Coffee House, 2615 W. 13th St.
Espresso to Go Go, 102 St. Francis
GroundHouse Market & Cafe, Wichita State University
Il Primo Espresso Café, 6422 Central Ave
Milkfloat, 535 W. Douglas
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 11:20 AM.
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