A Hot Cup of Joe

Caffeine is an important part of any convention experience. When you’ve run around like crazy, stayed up way too late, and then gotten up way too early to get to the next thing on your list, you need a hard shot of a controlled substance to get you going. Caffeine fits that bill. Seeing as I was at SpeedGaming Live 2024, and there were plenty of coffee places around, I decided to give each of them a chance to wow me with their caffeinated offerings.

For this control experiment I went with the hot vanilla latte at each of the selected places to see who could really do it best. One chance each to take the crown.

Sheetz

We start at the Sheetz, which is right over by the hotel the convention is at. Sheetz is the natural place all of the convention goers tend to go to for food and coffee since it’s within easy reach even if you don’t have a car. Generally speaking their food is passable; not too great, since it’s largely microwaved food, but also not so bad that you reject eating it. I’d put it a step or two above terrible fast food (like Hardees) but if I have a choice of going to any place that serves decent food and coffee, I’ll do that instead.

Even by that less than glowing assessment, the coffee I got from Sheetz failed to deliver. The hot vanilla latte I got from them was one of the most subpar coffee experiences I’ve had in some time. The coffee has a strange flavor to it. It was weirdly burned, like they overcooked the espresso, but it also had this aftertaste to it. Maybe it was just from the burned flavor, or maybe it was residual sugar-free syrup taste coming through in the sugary drink I got, but either way it just tasted bad. I drank about half of it and then gave up on the rest, making me very glad I got the regular size and not the large.

About the only good thing I can say about the coffee is that it wasn’t too sweet. Sometimes Sheetz coffee can be too sweet, to a massively diabetic degree. I appreciated that this wasn’t so sweet that I felt like I had to water it down with more milk. That might have been because there was sugar free syrup in there, somewhere, though. So it’s just a qualified point in their favor. Overall, though, it was just a very bad cup of coffee.

Weird Brothers

After the terrible cup of joe I got from Sheetz, I was willing to go farther afield to try and find something tolerable. I, along with a couple of other convention goers, ended up over at Weird Brothers Coffee where, as agreed, I got a vanilla latte. It was decidedly much better. This is actually the kind of drink I was hoping for. Vanilla latte isn’t a very adventurous drink. It’s a solid baseline. Hard to screw up, easy to make tasty, and just about everyone will enjoy it. And Weird Brothers was able to handle it because they’re a coffee shop and this is their bread and butter.

The coffee was smooth, not too robust and certainly not burned. The vanilla flavor was there but not too overpowering. The drink itself was sweet but not overly so. All around this was just the right kind of brew to start off the day. Of note, within two days of drinking the swill at the hotel, finding it to be old, burned, and awful, and while Sheetz wasn’t able to best them, Weird Brothers handily took the crown. It was everything I wanted from a nice, basic coffee, and because of that I’d likely go back again.

Dunkin

Okay, this one is a cheat. I went to Dunkin for their doughnuts, wanting to eat some on air while watching a Final Fantasy Randomizer race (food comms are very much a thing in the community), and while I was there I got a coffee. The cheat was that I didn’t get a vanilla latte, but there’s a reason for that. I’ve had the Dunkin vanilla latte and I hate it. They have a weirdly flavored vanilla syrup (what they call “Vanilla Swirl”) and I just can’t stand the taste of it. I knew I didn’t want to drink it again, so when I ended up with Dunkin I went with my default.

That would be the frozen coffee. This is, essentially, a coffee slush drink or, as I like to think of it, a Coffee Frosty. It’s really just cream, ice, and coffee syrup, and I don’t even know what the coffee syrup does. Is it put in instead of coffee? Does it have caffeine? Am I really even getting coffee in my coffee at all? I don’t know, but it does taste good. Certainly better than their vanilla latte, that’s for sure. I don’t normally recommend Dunkin for their coffee as I find it too dark and too strong, but this weird drink suits my needs every time.

Just, seriously, do not get their vanilla flavors. They’re so nasty.

Sheetz Again

Finally, on the way out of town I hit another Sheetz. It wasn’t the same one as before, and I really didn’t even want to go there at all instead hoping I’d find a Starbucks or Dunkin or something else. I’d been burned by Sheetz once, I didn’t want to do it again. But I did need coffee, and gas, so I stopped off and got both.

Thankfully, this second time around Sheetz actually managed to make a halfway decent brew. The best part was that it was palatable. Not great, mind you, because Sheetz doesn’t make good food, but passable at a minimum. The coffee didn’t taste burned, there was no sugar-free aftertaste to the drink, and I was able to sip on it without gagging. That’s not to say it was good as it was way too sweet and there was too much foam, but still, passable. If I had gotten this the first day of the con I might have been willing to go back repeatedly and then we wouldn’t have this article. Still, even just being passable doesn’t give me much faith in the company.

Oh, and the ham, egg, and cheese muffin I got from them had clearly been sitting out too long and was rock hard on the bottom and barely had any flavor at all. Even when they manage to score a few points, they then fuck it up somewhere else. That’s the Sheetz experience, through and through.

Next time I really should just go to Wawa. They have those in Northern Virginia now.