Reporting Trip: 1000 Faces Coffee

On the outside, coffee shops look just like another building in a long line of places to go. But on the inside, they provide a place to go to get work done and build community over a small cup of coffee.

In Athens, 1000 Faces is one of many options customers can go to for their cup of coffee and place to focus and get work done, or that is how it used to be.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 1000 Faces has removed all seating tables. Now, customers are limited to grabbing coffee inside the shop, and then leaving with their to-go cup.

“”I still come to pick-up coffee pretty frequently,” Troy Little, a customer inside 1000 Faces said. “However, it’s definitely not as often and with having to do homework not sitting in the cafe, it is a little harder to do homework. I don’t have those nice cafe vibes for me to concentrate on stuff.”

When a customer walks into 1000 Faces, they are usually met with tables full of people and conversation. Now, they are met with a sign instructing them to stay six feet away from others, hand sanitizer, masks and not a table in sight.

The customer follows circles put on the floor to dictate where to stand before making the order, then they order to a masked barista. They then walk to another set of circles as they wait for their coffee cup to be made, and served in a to-go cup.

The customer takes the cup, and walks out of an empty coffee shop after only spending mere minutes waiting in line, ordering and then finally receiving their cup. Whereas customers are usually spending hours working on homework or catching up with old friends, they are held to a couple minutes with little-to-no human interaction before they leave the shop.