Article Contributed on: 1/15/2009 1:32:27 PM
Dustin Olde is busy at work Jan. 15 as he adeptly pours an Americano into a paper cup while talking to a customer on the phone.
The hissing steam briefly drowns out the sounds of the Counting Crows classic "Mr. Jones," playing softly in the background. A young woman peruses the pages of a newspaper as another man surfs the Internet on his laptop.
Yes, we're in a coffee shop, but most of the customers aren't here for a caffeine fix. Instead, they're waiting on a price estimate from Olde on their cars.
Olde, owner of Lube and Latte, 2595 Kipling St., opened up shop here in May 2007 with the goal of offering customers gourmet coffee served up with vehicular justice.
"Neither my wife nor myself is an automotive person, but we had a lot of miserable experiences at auto shops," Olde said. "There were some times when we got charged a lot of money to fix something that wasn't really broken."
So with a background in nonprofits and a college major in music, Olde went back to school at the age of 32 to study how to fix up cars at the Emily Griffith Opportunity School in Denver. At the time, he had no experience in auto repair.
"Just tinkering with cars, doing oil changes and things like that," he said. "That was about it."
After a year of school, Olde worked for a few auto repair shops, where he saw firsthand what people fear most when they take in their cars -- unscrupulous business practices.
"I saw people purposely breaking cars, trying to sell things to people they didn't need," he said. "There were some pretty desperate folks trying to beef up their revenues."
The lowest of the lows came when he witnessed a car mechanic inflate a repair bill for his own mother-in-law.
"I used to work in nonprofits trying to keep kids out of gangs and things like that, so this was a total paradigm shift for me," he said. "I went from helping people to watching people get taken advantage of."
Olde claims his business is different. He offers customers a comfy waiting area, provides health insurance to his employees and vows to treat car owners with honesty, integrity and respect.
Though the business struggled at first to draw customers, he said the concept is finally catching on, especially with residents who live nearby.
"One of the biggest challenges has been convincing people we're legitimate because most of these people have probably been burned in the past," Olde said. "You can't just open up a shop, call yourself legitimate and expect people to buy into that concept."
He still hasn't seen any profit from Lube and Latte - other than the tip jar from coffee drinkers - but he's happy with the results.
"I would much rather be swamped and busy all day and know I'm doing good for the community than make tons and tons of money and take advantage of people," he said.