A Litsa

Tetra Paks are technically recyclable somewhere, but probably not in your city. The great irony of plant-based milks is they all come in those ding dang Tetra Paks! I'm not ragging on the Tetra Pak company—I'm sure they are lovely—I'm just used to referring to those multi-layered, multi-material beverage cartons by the brand that popularized (invented?) them. It's like Kleenex. You get it. My shop, Dear Diary Coffeehouse goes through about 192 of those little cartons every month, and we're still in a COVID recession. That's so much landfill waste! In October 2019 I set my mind to solving this problem. I considered buying grocery store plant milk, but we go through so much, I wouldn't have refrigeration space. In that sense Tetra Paks are helpful, but still. So wasteful. I then tried making house-made oat milk by pureeing oats, straining them, adding oil... A quart of barista oat milk costs $2.30—I could make gallons for that amount of money, right? Oats are

Bricco Blend's logo is a milk frothing pitcher (bricco in Italian) and the Montopolis bridge all rolled into one image. I was really inspired by mid-century logos (who isn't) and worked through many, many iterations until I landed on one I felt worthy of the design books from where I drew my inspiration. I have really positive associations with Montopolis. I love my bike commute to the factory: going over the Montopolis bridge; riding along the frontage road and being ushered toward my prosperous future by the passing exit sign that reads "Montopolis." Montopolis is a bittersweet too. I've observed the long-time residents of "the island" become closer and more neighborly and more generous toward each other as the flood of gentrification washes out generational homes and Montopolis history. I blame the city. They could choose to give black property owners income-based property taxes as reparations for segregation and housing discrimination. I only recentl