The Art of Coffee: How The Daily Press CLT Used Instagram to Become Charlotte’s Best-Kept Secret
Everyone has a story about how they found their favorite “hidden gem” shop or restaurant–stumbling upon it by accident on a snowy night, going to it on a first date, or friends recommending it for their “to die for” tiramisu or vintage sunglasses. Other times, the stories are more mundane. I, for instance, found my favorite Charlotte cafe on Instagram.
It’s truly a testament to the power of social media that a platform best-known for the (over-)sharing of food and pet pictures has become a means of discovering new and interesting brands. I happened upon The Daily Press by accident–I was checking out a local tattoo artist’s work, saw the username @thedailypressclt and thought, “hey, maybe that’s a new news blog!” I didn’t expect what I found, but was pleasantly surprised–there were tons and tons of images of gorgeous “latte art”, and all the photos had an oddly familiar backdrop. Soon I realized the Daily Press operates out of The Evening Muse, a small cabaret-style venue on the corner of 36th and North Davidson streets in the heart of Charlotte’s NoDa Arts district. As a returned Asheville transplant, I was intrigued–I’d long missed the cafes of Asheville when I returned to Charlotte, and hoped I’d finally found a haven for fancy lattes in a comfortable setting.
The success of owner Lindsey Pitman, a recent Charlottean, lies not just in her passion for coffee craft–it lies in her seemingly-intuitive understanding of Instagram as a platform geared towards aesthetics and the power of hashtags as social links. With 4,000+ followers and growing, The Daily Press is a singularly modern phenomenon: equal parts artisanal latte art, old-school cafe culture and social media savviness, The Daily Press’s success story is one that couldn’t have happened five years ago, much less fifteen or twenty. As their brand gets bigger, their guest baristas more high-profile and their events (such as the hilariously-titled #BrewTangJam after their “crew”, the Brew-Tang Clan) grow ever larger, The Daily Press’s vintage aesthetic and strong social media presence can only grow.