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5 best coffee shops in the University area to work from

(1) Cafeccino on Mallard Creek Church Road

Location: Cochran Commons.

Pros: Fast, reliable internet. Lots of windows. Many types of furniture from cushion chairs to large farm tables.

Cons: The tables are very close together so you may feel like you’re part of many different conversations.

Pro tip: Try the Toasted Marshmallow Chai with a Bacon, Egg and Swiss Cheese Croissant – it is big enough for two meals.

Cafeccino gives area a fresh shot of expresso

Shortly after Cafeccino opened 11/2 years ago, I dropped by to check it out.

I liked the back story: A raggle-taggle band of college students had occupied an empty Caribou Coffee site on Mallard Creek Church Road.

Their plan was to replace corporate coffee with a local coffeehouse, just 10 minutes away from the UNC Charlotte campus. Leading them was their manager at Central Piedmont Community College’s Victory Coffee, CPCC math instructor Phillip Tran.

Tran, Cafeccino’s founder and owner, raised the required funding and attracted media attention for his very un-corporate approach to management. Instead of demanding uniformity and groupthink, Tran, a former IBM employee, set up a democratic workplace designed to honor creativity and help build entrepreneurial skills for his young employees.

“If you’re small, you have to work at rooting yourself in the community,” Tran said in early 2014. He wanted to try student ideas, from selling crepes to hosting live music. “We’re just trying to mix and match, and hope it works.”

By the time I visited Cafeccino, University City’s indie coffeehouse scene had gone further downhill after Jackson’s Java, across the street from UNC Charlotte, unexpectedly closed. I was ready to embrace Cafeccino.

Cafeccino offers lessons in careers, art of latte

College instructors teach, tutor, test and often serve as references when former students enter the job market.

Phillip Tran does one better: He hires them.

As of January, Tran, 43, a former IBM employee who now teaches math at Central Piedmont Community College, has hired seven students to work at his new coffee shop, Cafeccino, in the University City area. . .

The idea for Cafeccino started with another small business, Victory Coffee on CPCC’s central campus, where Tran also is the manager. There, he saw big aspirations among his six employees. . . “Out of the blue I thought, ‘What if we had a chance to make it something bigger? To have more job opportunities for student employees … in addition to being a barista?’ ” Tran recalled. “What if we can make … a corporation?”

Team of teachers, students hope to reinvent local coffee shop

People stopping by the new Cafeccino at Cochran Commons may feel at first like they’ve stepped back in time. Little has changed, visually, since a national coffee company closed its store here last spring. But the coffee, lattes, cappuccinos and coffee-shop experience offered at Cafeccino are all new, thanks to seven CPCC students and teachers who think teamwork will help them thrive where other coffee shops have not.

“We have a dream,” says partner and manager Phillip Tran, “and that is to create a corporation that can create white-collar jobs as well as blue-collar jobs and hire as many CPCC students as we can.”