Blueprint Coffee’s Watson location inside a former auto shop. All images courtesy of Blueprint Coffee.
Blueprint Coffee was entering its second year of business in St. Louis, Missouri, when unarmed teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, just a few miles from the Blueprint cafe.
The owners saw that their community was hurting, and focused on offering support to those who needed it in whatever way they could.
“At that point we were only a year old, and I don’t think we really understood much about social media and company voice,” Blueprint Coffee Owner Mike Marquard recently told DCN.
Three years later, in 2017, when a judge acquitted St. Louis police officer James Stockley of murder charges after he shot and killed Anthony Lamar Smith, Blueprint spoke out again. The company also spoke out publicly on gun violence issues and racism throughout the presidency of Donald Trump.
“We took a pretty forward stance with our feelings on that,” said Marquard. “People were familiar with our brand, but we still received quite a bit of feedback, both positive and negative.”
Through it all, Blueprint Coffee has grown into three retail locations in St. Louis: the original coffee bar and roastery on Delmar Boulevard in University City; a popular Watson location that used to house an auto shop; and a third location in the city’s literary arts building.
Blueprint Commissary Director Lindsey Usry inside the Watson shop.
As they currently prepare to build out an approximately 11,000-square-foot space that will become their new roastery, headquarters and training center, the Blueprint team has not abandoned plans for social activism, especially regarding gun violence and institutional racism.
Black Lives Matter signs are displayed in the windows of Blueprint’s three cafes, and blog posts about systemic racism live throughout the Blueprint website. Yet the most impactful representation of Blueprint’s public stance against gun violence may be its current Instagram campaign, in which prominent blue squares on the Blueprint grid highlight gun-related tragedies of the past.
Wanting to confront the issue of gun violence both locally and throughout the United States, the Blueprint owners began strategizing ways in which to publicly express their collective voice. Instead of offering a one-off post after a new tragedy unfolds — a strategy that is reactive — the owners decided to focus on past incidents, offering consistent reminders of the human impacts of gun violence.
“We wanted to make it something that isn’t easy to forget or overlook, because that seems to be what happens if something awful happens in the community,” said Marquard. “People are outraged for a while and then people start to heal and go back to life as it was. I don’t think the pain goes away, just the shock and awe.”
The bright blue squares stand out among the photos of latte art and bags of coffee. The latest reads “May 15, 2022. 10 DEAD. Buffalo, NY.” The next one reads, “April 20, 1999. 10 DEAD. Columbine, CO.” Each has captions outlining the tragedy and honoring the lives lost.
Against the backdrop of Instagram, where the timeline always moves forward, these snapshots of important moments in American history create a somber effect, emphasizing the permanence of gun violence. Their juxtaposition with shots of latte art, coffee bags and other familiar coffee-focused IG images is equally intentional.
As of this writing, there have been 223 mass shootings in the United States in 2023, which equates to more than 1.6 mass shootings per day.
“This is where we’re at as a culture,” says Marquard. “There’s a coffee culture. There’s a food and beverage culture, but there’s also a violence culture.”
Blueprint wants to talk about both.
Blueprint Coffee active owners Nora Brady, Kevin Reddy, Mike Marquard and Mazi Razani in front of Blueprint’s forthcoming new headquarters.
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Jen Roberts
Jen Roberts is a Paris, France-based writer and avid coffee drinker. She’s currently writing a book on women in coffee.
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I wonder why they left out a few salient details when they gave the short sanitised version of Michael Brown’s demise. They sort of forgot to mention that Brown had phycically attacked the officer at his patrol car, wresting the officer’s duty gun away from the officer, and shooting the officer with his own gun, seriously injuring him. Brown then fled, initialy, but circled back round to apparently attack the officer again. He was a very large young man and as he bore down upon the injured officer, who had recovered his duty weapon and had it in his hand, the officer made several commands for him to stop. He continued approaching the injured officer, and when he had closed to within just a few feet, ignoring warnings and commands to stop, the officer fired, taking down his assailant.
Thus the clear initiator of “gun violence” that afternoon was Michael Brown. I find it VERY disturbing that the villain in this situation, the primary aggressor, the would-be murderer, the first one to fire a gun, is held up as an hero. “Oh the poor abused child, and that mean old murderous cop”.
Not so.
Yes there is a problem with criminal misuse of firearms in the St. Louis area. But the ones involved in that are NOT the millions of law abiding peace loving everyday citizens. Armed or not. I will also boldly declare that peace loving citizens will arm themselves as a defense against the sort of person Michael Brown was…. violent, aggressive, hurtful.
The issue is not how many pieces of steel and plastic are in the hands of everyday people. The problem is how a vanishingly small portion of those people misuse them. And that factor is why our right to keep and bear arms must be protected.
Exactly! So tired of BS “stories” like this that completely downplay criminal behavior and try to twist deviant, immoral and criminal behavior into somehow making the bad guys into victims! We do not have a “gin violence” problem… we have a violent and criminal behavior problem! To fail to address the problem (behavior) is irresponsible and even worse, totally ineffective..!!!
Such a BS article, stop making criminals victims! If you really cared about gun violence you would try to address these problems not punish the good guys for it. You certainly won’t see me supporting this coffee shop.
Well you’ve done it. My interest in coffee is not enough to abide your totally liberal positioning. I will unsubscribe and block future contacts.
Dear Roast Magazine, can you please try and stick to articles about coffee. We don’t need to hear about a cafes politicial opinions or thoughts on social justice, guns, racism, politics etc.
Stick to interesting coffee articles please or you’ll quickly lose a paying subscriber.
LOL at all the fascists with hurt feelers. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Daily Coffee News is awesome, and I love all that you do! Thanks for highlighting such a cool story.
Sheesh, the comments section. Such delicate little snowflakes who believe resisting arrest warrants the death penalty and blame mass shootings on mental health (hello, ableism). Hope you boys have fun at your next Proud Boys/Trump rally.
Snowflakes blame “mass shootings” on mental health and you seem to think this is barmy thinking? Please, name ONE such mass shooting which was perpetrated by an individual of sound mind, well socialised, raised in a home with a functional father figure, was ot strung out on drugs or toxic fantasies, and was gainfully employed in a long term basis.
Can you in the alternative cite one incident where one of those nasty works of metal and plastic picked itself up off a table or desk, aimed itself at a human being, and launched a small piece of metal at a high rate of speed which then caused serious harm to the one it struck? No? can’t dp either can you.
Then WHO IS it perpetrating these events? AndHOW are they getting their tools?
We know Michael V Brown got the handgun with which he shot that officer by assaulting him and taking it from him. did HE pass a bacgrond check, have a permit, buy through an FFL, went through a waiting period to take possession?
Just a few sipe questions probing reality, here……
Well, I blame myself. I knew where this silly article would go and I read it anyway.
Notwithstanding the clarifying facts that Tionico and others point out regarding the misrepresented story of Michael Brown’s demise, I’m so tired of progressive little liberal white people, like the 3 of the 4 who own this company, feigning some level of heightened virtue and concern for black people. What they really want is for black people to remain victims so they can put up their BLM signs and exploit them for profit in their business. I hate to criticize a specialty coffee company, because there really aren’t all that many, but c’mon man, how ridiculously obvious can you be. The only more absurd example is the article in this month’s edition about Anarchy Coffee, who is a self-described anti-capitalist company that had a pay-what-you-can-afford policy and is now going out of business…the irony.
“There’s a dishonest tyranny in the liberal/progressive/socialist agenda that comes down and says ‘we are here because we care about you; we want what’s best for you’. But really what they want is the control of your life”
Allen West
Well, I blame myself. I knew where this silly article would go and I read it anyway.
Notwithstanding the clarifying facts that Tionico and others point out regarding the misrepresented story of Michael Brown’s demise, I’m so tired of progressive little liberal white kids, like the 3 of the 4 who own this company, feigning some level of heightened virtue and concern for black people. What they really want is for black people to remain victims so they can put up their BLM signs and exploit them for profit in their business. I hate to criticize a specialty coffee company, because there really aren’t all that many, but c’mon man, how ridiculously obvious can you be. The only more absurd example is the article in this month’s edition about Anarchy Coffee, who is a self-described anti-capitalist company that had a pay-what-you-can-afford policy and is now going out of business…the irony.
“There’s a dishonest tyranny in the liberal/progressive/socialist agenda that comes down and says ‘we are here because we care about you; we want what’s best for you’. But really what they want is the control of your life”
Allen West
Downtown St. Louis is a disaster! The police have been on a stand down for the last five years because the prosecuting attorney let criminals walk.