The Interceptor

Good morning... What can I get for you?

I hope you had a great weekend. We did a little inventory here at Green Apron Stories and came up with today's story for you.

The first store I ever worked at in Bellingham, WA was located in a Haggen's grocery store. It was a little kiosk known as "The Meridian Store"... The quarters were so close you just had to be alright with brushing against the other partners' asses. It must have been about 150 sq/ft. The back room (i.e. closet) stored the manager's workstation, safe, a 6 hour supply of beans and other supplies. But that's not what I'm going to talk about today... At this store they had (have) a thing called "The Interceptor". It's a huge steel box that catches all of the espresso machine waste and stores it until a closing partner decides it needs to be wheeled out to the parking lot storm drain and emptied. Yes... emptied in the storm drain.

Now, I'm sure things have changed since moving over to the Verismo-Magistrale-Auto-push-button-o-matic-suck-the-romance-out-of-an-espresso-drink machines went in. There is quite a bit less waste from those machines... But back in the day of La Marzocco, there was a lot of grounds, water, milk, syrup and other stuff that went down the drain and into "The Interceptor".

Why "The Interceptor"? Well, I think the powers that were decided that creating an actual drain for the store was expensive... and a big steel box, rolled past the customers and into the parking lot where we could violate nature by dumping into the storm drain seemed like a good idea... But I digress... Another function of "The Interceptor" was as a Right of Passage. All of the new baristas got the pleasure of inheriting "The dump"... Grab a flatbed cart, slide out "The Interceptor", gingerly struggle the thing onto the cart, roll it to the storm drain, and try to empty the full beast while simultaneously praying not to get it on you... as it smelled like your father's work boots after 10 years of walking through cow poop...

There are still a few folks around that remember "The Interceptor"... We often joke about it when we see each other. Occasionally I make a trip up North just to see the old store... and "The Interceptor"

We'll see you tomorrow for your usual...

Pat Nerr...