For over a century, Minnesotans have defined Northfield by its cows and colleges. Now, the world is coming to know the leafy little city for its coffee.
Northfield’s own Little Joy Coffee shop has brewed itself onto the world map in recent weeks after inviting cafes and caffeine lovers everywhere to steal the recipe for its smash-hit raspberry Danish latte.
From Paris to Poznań, Malaysia to Morocco, it is a call that has been answered by an ever-growing list of establishments around the globe, and nobody anywhere is more surprised than the drink’s inventor.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘Okay, what if only like five people put this on their menu?’” Little Joy owner Cody Larson told CNN.
“I thought, at best, it would be maybe a dozen shops.”
That’s not to say Larson did not expect his creation to be well-received.
The popularity of previous carrot cake lattes and cardamom bun lattes at the coffee shop had proven his theory that dessert-inspired drinks are in the ascendancy. After weeks of toiling in the shop’s basement kitchen to complete the seasonal spring menu, he gave up on a mango sticky rice concoction and found inspiration in a flaky European delicacy.
Anchored by a raspberry syrup that mimics the filling often found in Danish pastries, the drink sees milk and a double shot of espresso splashed over ice before being topped with a cream cheese foam.
Rolled out in early March alongside a matcha-ginger beer creation and other iced specials, the raspberry Danish latte was an instant winner, even at an $8 price point.
“For a lot of people, that’s a lot,” Larson said. “When you can put something familiar on your menu, I feel like people are more willing to take a chance on it.
“That’s maybe why these drinks that are inspired by something else that people might know already are tending to do better right now.”
Around the world in 480 lattes
Publicly critiquing your own pricing may seem an odd ploy for most businesses, but for Little Joy it has helped build a 139,000-strong Instagram following that equates to roughly six times the entire town’s population.
The shop’s recently launched “DIY or Buy” social media series is an evolution of its long-running approach to freely giving recipes away online, whereby store manager Serena Walker delivers judgement on whether viewers would be better off making the chosen drink at home — all in her own nonchalant, occasionally profane, Gen Z style.
“We hardly have to script anything — she’s just got it,” said Larson.
The raspberry Danish verdict? Though coming in cheap at $2.46 homemade, “too many dishes, and you’re gonna stain your white clothes,” Walker concluded, before inviting all coffee shops watching to “steal” the recipe for themselves, even pointing viewers toward a link that explained how to produce the drink at scale.
By
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
