The Bean Counter in Worcester, MA

“The Bean Counter” is a café located on Highland Street in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. By selling signature coffee and pastry, it provides a cozy environment for both relaxation and business activities. It neighbors several other eateries, including a Thai restaurant, two relatively pricey American restaurants/bars and a Chinese fast food store. There’s also a small plaza nearby which contains a gas station, an outtake food store and a coin laundry place. The Street has moderate traffic, and individual or groups of pedestrians can often be seen. The café is within walking distance of two major colleges of the city: Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Becker College.

I visited “The Bean Counter” on the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 28. There was a good number of customers inside, doing individual work or chatting with others. After buying a cup of Chai tea, I struck a casual conversation with two female baristas of the store (the owner wasn’t there at the time).

Both of them were quite satisfied with their working experience since the beginning of their employment here about four months ago. According to their observation, customers here come from a good mix of ethnic background, and are mostly students from nearby colleges and local residents. They store is usually the busiest during morning and lunch rush hours, but normally it enjoys a fairly stable flow of customers. They didn’t directly reveal the rent and its change, but a customer told me that the rent of his apartment in the same neighborhood has gone up 6-7% since last year, so I assume the rent of the café has also increased slightly.

The store is divided into two sections by a wall in between, making the entire space a little bit narrow. Its structure differs from other cafés I’ve seen, which usually feature a spacious social space in front of the coffee-making area. For this reason, I assume the store is a renovation of a previous residential apartment, similar to the stores in Tianzifang in Shanghai which are converted from residential housings to commercial areas. The Thai restaurant that’s next to the café also has an unusually structured space, which might also be a result of such conversion.

Lydia Chen ’18