VIDEO: Wake Up Iowa City Coffee Cart Gets Second Life

When Ben Hanson, owner of the Wake Up Iowa City coffee cart, bought a sail boat and left to ply the waters around South America in October 2010, customers wondered if the popular java stop would ever reopen.

“People kept asking me about the coffee cart ... it was an outpouring of public sentiment that forced me into opening the cart again,” said Jarrett Mitchell, a former Hanson employee and the cart's new proprietor.

Mitchell restarted the coffee cart in April. “It was kind of a rough duty,” he remembers. “I came here one day and it was snowing.”

Now that the weather is warmer, business is looking up. “Iowa’s really got a lot going for it,” he said. “In Iowa City, if I can think of it, I can do it.”

Reviving the coffee cart brings Mitchell full circle.

He attended and graduated from the University of Iowa art school, then left town to get his master's degree in fine art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco. He returned to Iowa City in November 2009 and worked at the coffee cart in summer 2010.

Now that Mitchell has reopened the Wake Up Iowa City coffee cart in a parking lot next to 30th Century Bicycles on East Prentiss Street, he has been seeing many repeat customers. “[After] you try it once, you know it’s the greatest coffee in town,” he proudly claims. 

Mitchell said his relationship with 30th Century Bicycles is part of a movement across the country in which bike shops are teaming up with coffee shops.

“[We have] reciprocating business for each other. They bring people in that come and have some coffee, and some of the people that come have coffee are getting stuff done on their bikes.”

Wake Up Iowa City exclusively sells Capulin coffee from Mexico, a company which pays workers higher than normal fair trade wages, and has environmentally friendly processing practices.

Coffee is the largest agricultural crop in the world, Mitchell says, so most growers process it as easily as they can, typically by pouring thousands of gallons of water through the crop to filter out the bad beans.

Capulin, on the other hand, is hand-sorted, avoiding the waste water. The beauty of it, according to Mitchell, is that it’s “not only good for the worker, it’s good for the environment, and it tastes the best. You get all of those things together.” 

Wake Up Iowa City is open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is closed on Sundays.

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