It was 8:55 a.m. on a recent Sunday, about two hours before the stores at Stanford Shopping Center opened for business. The parking lot was fairly empty, as was the open-air mall itself — with the exception of the two dozen or so folks lined up outside Ralph’s Coffee.
My husband and I queued up behind a woman who filmed her walk-up to the buzzy coffee shop, which is part of the Ralph Lauren empire and the first location in Northern California. By the time the Ralph’s signature hunter green doors flung open at 9 a.m., another dozen people had joined the line. Fifteen minutes into our wait, the trio behind us gave up and went to long-standing mall bakery La Baguette. (I admit: We considered going to Blue Bottle Coffee.)
We ended up ordering our $7 lattes at 9:20 a.m. and left with cups in hand 10 minutes later. While the taste was to our liking (Ralph’s uses La Colombe coffee beans), the drinks were both lukewarm (perhaps because it was so busy, the barista felt rushed and didn’t steam the milk properly)…