Write Around Tampa

The Bean Bar

17018 Palm Pointe Drive

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Tampa

The first pic was also my first taste of The Bean Bar; not very inviting. What coffee shop tells their customers they can't stay longer than thirty minutes? As my mother says—who I brought along for the excursion—it takes her thirty minutes to get out of the car and walk to the front door. I'll try to shake off that unwelcome and have a positive experience.

Quality and pricing of food and drink:
Mom and I split the fancy avocado toast (balsamic drizzle, tomato, and feta cheese made it fancy) and a bag of barbecue chips, with a hot chocolate each (mine with caramel). With $1 for the barista the total was $22, which is not bad for a coffee shop, and it was all delicious, although hot chocolate not hot enough for me. I like my hot drinks McDonald's lawsuit hot. Also the toast toppings were so cold it made the toast cold. The flavor made up for it, but it would have been so much better if the bread stayed toasty.

Are there enough outlets?
Several along the wall.

How's the wifi?
On the door they have written "free wifi." Not sure who charges for wifi anymore, but the network and password were displayed right on the counter.

Will my muse come out?
No. She'll be watching the clock, hoping to not go over her allotted thirty minutes. You can calm her down by parking somewhere else, but the sign is really off-putting and almost made me want to leave. But as it turns out, thirty minutes was plenty of time to construct the outline for this article.

How long can I park it?
According to the sign in the parking lot, thirty minutes. That's my snarky answer. To be more charitable, I'm assuming from open to close (6-5 M-F, 7-5 Sat-Sun). The staff was kind and accommodating. If they're smart, they'll get rid of that sign.

Final rating: 1 out of 5 laptops (this rating is strictly based on the sign that tells me I can only stay for thirty minutes, which means I have no time to write. Otherwise, 4)

Rachel Remick's fiction and non-fiction stories have appeared in various magazines, among them Rosebud, Bluestem, Minerva Rising, and ellipsis . . . literature and art. A frequent contributor to women's magazine Sasee, her writing has also been published in several volumes of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books. She lives in Tampa, Florida.