Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Whadyaknow? Kids Like Joe.

This from Teacher Magazine:

Coffee is the norm for a growing number of teens, kids

Getting your morning jolt can be tough in Hawarden, Iowa, where there are 2,600 people and not one Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts. It's even harder when you're too young to drive.
Which makes the middle and high school students at West Sioux Community School especially grateful for the Falcon Joe Coffee Shop, an oasis of espressos, lattes and other coffee drinks right inside their school.

"It's a very popular thing. Most of us hang out on the couches in the senior lounge and chat while we drink lattes," says 18-year-old Diana Rubio, who has been drinking coffee since she was about 12.

She and the 3-year-old cafe — part of the school's business curriculum — are part of a new and fast-growing culture of coffee-drinking youths who co-opted a drink once enjoyed mostly by adults.

It's a change fueled by the easy-drinking dessert-like coffee concoctions popular at so many coffee shops, as well as by permissive adults. Falcon Joe, for example, was the idea of the school principal.

"Parents view it as the least of possible evils, and it's something they do themselves," says Kevin Osborn, who studies teen coffee-drinking trends as an analyst with consumer research firm Social Technologies. He likens the coffee shop to the soda shops of a generation ago...

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