Editorial: Coffee shops need to respect the community

When Hot Chick-A-Latte opened in Bonney Lake last year, the owners promised that employees would never do anything as “tasteless” as wearing pasties instead of the baristas’ standard bikinis.

Owner Russ Parrish says that changed when the baristas learned how much money they could earn by exchanging their bikinis for strategically placed stickers, tiny bits of duct tape or other types of pasties. And he wasn’t about to stop them, he adds.

Now the pasties are part of the uniform. Employees wear a scarf and pasties on Tuesdays and an apron and pasties on Thursdays. Employees have the choice of participating in the theme days, Parrish says — they can dress up or stay home.

Local residents may not have liked the idea of men driving through the stand every day to catch of glimpse of the scantily-clad baristas who offered a grin and a naughty joke with a cup of joe, but it wasn’t until the last few weeks that Mayor Neil Johnson and the police department started receiving complaints by the dozen.

Residents say they’ve seen employees wearing much less than a bikini wandering around the parking lot or hanging out the window trying to attract the attention of drivers passing by. One woman said she was across the street pumping gas when her children saw what they believed to be a naked woman because of her lack of clothing.

Cowgirls, home to South Sound’s original bikini baristas, opened a new coffee stand in Bonney Lake last week, causing some in the community to worry that perhaps there will be a competition between the two, each showing more skin to attract costumers.

One woman is spearheading a protest this weekend, in addition to a clothing drive so the baristas have something other than pasties to wear to work. Other residents would like to see the coffee shops marked as “adult” so unwitting parents don’t wander through with children.

Council members and the mayor are pursuing options to change city code to redefine what is considered indecent. One option, Johnson said, is to draw an imaginary line across a woman’s breasts and say that anything below that can’t be displayed in public.

It’s going to be a bumpy road, though. The city’s hands are essentially tied — it’s completely legal by the health department’s standards and the department of labor and industries for employees to wear pasties.

If people don’t like the coffee shops, they don’t have to buy their coffee there. However, it’s ridiculous to expect residents to find a new route home to avoid pasty-clad baristas hanging out of drive-through windows. To be good neighbors, Hot Chick-A-Latte and Cowgirls should take the community’s concerns into account and stay inside, where a wink and a smile is a perk for stopping by, not for simply driving by.