For many years of my life I have written poetry. I was never all that serious about it, but I did have the opportunity to publish some work in a few midwestern literary journals in my mid-late 20’s. In 2010, I launched an online journal called, Everyday Other Things, for which I curated original work submitted by visual artists to ..read more

A few years ago while working at an independent coffee shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I first came across the concept of third places.  This term, originally coined by American sociologist Ray Oldenburg, identifies “third places” as the public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ..read more

Since first launching Planetary Coffee in August of 2016, our shared existence as both business and life partners has been a whirlwind of activity. This has been especially true of the last year since we began operations of a full-service specialty coffee, tea, and espresso bar in downtown Traverse City, Michigan. We launched our coffee lounge in the State Street ..read more

Fall has brought the fruits of some creative collaborations seeded earlier in the season. It’s always so inspiring to see what can be created when a group of individuals, with a variety of artistic talents, join forces. We had the honor of collaborating on a  bodaciously-styled photoshoot, which was recently featured on Wedding Day Magazine’s blog! Thanks so much to all the ..read more

Life is full of celebratory moments, and coffee is one of those universal beverages that brings people together in magical ways. Nothing brings us more joy than the opportunity to serve incredible coffee and toast life’s memorable moments, so when we had the chance recently to come together with an all-star cast of creative industry professionals, to create a show-stopping ..read more

Planetary Coffee is all about inclusivity. We consider ourselves allies for all those who identify as queer, bi, trans, gay, lesbian, or otherwise marginalized  by color, gender or sexuality. This Sunday, June 25th, we will be marching in UpNorth Pride’s  4th annual Up North Pride Rally and Visibility March, and Emily and her dance troupe are honored to have the opportunity ..read more

Emily recently got the chance to swing by Traverse City’s newest bridal boutique, One Oak Bride.  Since the  launch of our roving coffee truck in Traverse City last August, we have hoped to connect our stellar coffee service with coffee-loving couples planning their wedding in beautiful Northwest Lower Michigan. Since we are new on the wedding vendor scene here, we ..read more

On the days when Erik’s been operating our-up shop this winter, he’s been putting together these great little paper animations as videos to post on our Instagram and Facebook pages. They are cute, playful, and a fun way to vary our social media content. We wanted to bundle them here on our blog for you to access at your convenience. For those about to ..read more

Just wanted to make a quick introduction to how we prepare some of our non-traditional latte drinks here at Planetary Coffee. Since launching our little coffee shop on wheels this past August, we have taken a very coffee-forward approach to our menu. We designed our offerings from this angle partly due to curiosity and inquisitiveness, but mostly out of necessity, due to the limited scope of ..read more

A few months ago, when we first launched Traverse City’s first coffee truck, Planetary Coffee, we had no concrete idea where the next few months would take us. We just figured, let’s just get this thing off the ground, and we’ll sort out the details as we go along. We had considered a variety of scenarios of how we might ..read more