Friendly coffee warrior

Starbucks will own us.

It’s the second chain coffee franchise to open in east Sparks in the past year. In December, the coffee giants opened a little strip mall dive at the corner of Prater Way and Sparks Boulevard. I’ve never been there. Neither has Kathleen “K.C.” Campbell, who owns a tiny 9-by-12-foot coffee shack, the Copa, in the parking lot of Texaco, just a few blocks away from the new Starbucks.

I wasn’t sure K.C. would still be in business. But Copa was bustling at 8 a.m. Tuesday. I took my place behind a Yukon, an Isuzu Trooper and a Ford Explorer XLT. When I pulled up to one of two windows, K.C. greeted me with a smile. “I’ll be right there,” she said. The 47-year-old was dressed casually in khakis, her blonde hair wrapped into a loose bun.

Copa is far from slick. Its sign features a hand-painted beach scene with an oversized cup o’ joe and a crab saying, “Let’s get smooth.” At Copa, coffee is ordered by actual volume—12 ounces, 20 ounces—rather than pretentious foreign adjectives masquerading as nouns.

K.C., who lives in Panther Valley, took over Copa about a year ago. The business was 7 years old and had a fairly well-established clientele.

“I was doing pretty good,” she told me after her morning rush. “I don’t require a bunch of money.”

By winter, the prospect of Starbucks loomed like the ghost of Christmas future. Her customers frequently asked, “What will you do when Starbucks comes?”

She tried not to think about it.

“I’m just me,” she said. “What can I do about the giant booger Starbucks? I didn’t think it was going to affect me.”

She called another coffee shop owner, not far from the Starbucks that opened on Pyramid Way and McCarran Boulevard. The owner said his business was cut in half.

Then the Starbucks near Copa opened—just before Christmas. K.C.'s business was halved, too. Happy holidays.

“I guess to some people I was their second choice—if that place had been there earlier,” she said.

K.C. stuck to her principles.

“I treat people like gold, I really do,” she said. “I’m friendly. I’m nice. Some people think I’m too friendly, that it’s creepy. But really it’s just sincere.”

By March, things were dismal. Gas prices were high. A war was on. She was saying good-bye to customers when a local contractor encouraged her to hang in. He showed her plans for construction around the Sparks Marina. She decided to stick it out. It’s been rough, but Copa’s tide might be turning.

“In the last couple of weeks, something broke open,” she said. “You know how things pop? Something has changed.”

A regular customer, Dan Christianson, stopped by the window for an Americano.

“Just a good, stiff cup of coffee,” Christianson told me. “I don’t need any of that girlie stuff, though she has plenty of it.”

The Copa, just off Interstate 80, is easy to get to, Christianson said. “And besides that, I can remember her name. You go [to Starbucks] and you get a new person every day.”

Christianson said he values a friendly face.

“She’s pretty damn cute, too,” he said of K.C.

Business is picking up, but K.C. isn’t sure how long that’ll last.

“I have great customers,” she said. “Some people will always come to places like mine. Some people will always go to places like Starbucks. I’ve never been to one. I’ve never been one to do what everyone else is standing in line to do.”