Penny Coffee Roasters is a new coffee shop down on the bricks, but is it any good? How does the place feel, what is unique about it and what is the best menu item?
To start, it was aesthetically very typical for a coffee shop. When I went it smelled like coffee, had simple metal decorations, dim-ish lighting and cheesy vocal jazz softly playing in the background. It’s a comfortable atmosphere, but it’s formulaic in that it looks and feels like about every coffee shop I’ve ever been in.
There were a couple unique things in Penny Coffee Roasters. It has a cute little side room to sit in with a couple of local decorations like a poster showing the Buffalo Bill Ranch in North Platte and pamphlets to read about the World Theater that’s just a couple blocks away. These are good features that push to show the store as its own entity. I just wish that there was more of it.
The final thing regarding the aesthetic of the store is that due to the lighting of the front area, it looks closed when it’s open and can be very easy to pass by. This can be easily remedied with something simple like a lamp though, so it’s not a big deal.
The food and coffee at Penny Coffee Roasters was good. I got a mocha and a coconut scone. My friend got a chai tea latte. All of it was reasonably priced.
I have a hard time describing coffee since I am not a coffee snob. Folgers is my favorite coffee. But, I could definitely taste that my mocha was good. It had a lighter flavor than I am used to and an extremely smooth texture with little to no grittiness, aftertaste or acidity.
When I tasted my friend’s tea it had the same texture but more of an aftertaste. That wasn’t necessarily bad though because the taste was pleasant and flowery.
The menu item that stuck out to me was the coconut scone.
Its texture was extremely light and flakey, and it had a good bit of glazing on the top that was soft enough that it made me assume that it was fresh.
I have a very limited sweet tooth before things start to taste bad to me, so the size of the scone and the amount of glazing had me scared that I wasn’t going to like it. Surprisingly, it had a subtle amount of sweetness that stayed present throughout the flavor of the scone but was never overwhelming. If I ever go back to Penny Coffee Roasters, it would be for the coconut scone.
I think that Penny Coffee Roasters is worth going to at least once for anyone who likes coffee. Its location and limited hours however make it harder to go to for students as opposed to just going to Starbucks, Java Notes or Barista’s. I rate Penny Coffee Roasters five out of five Loper stars.
