Some say the best way to grieve over a loved one is by being around family and friends and remembering all the good times you shared with someone who’s passed. Maybe if this was 1998. A better way is to drink a cinnamon dolce frappuccino while updating your Facebook page.
A funeral home in South Carolina will soon offer Starbucks coffee, lattes and free Wi-Fi for those grieving over their loved ones.
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While a Starbucks sign won’t be displayed in the funeral home and Starbucks employees won’t actually be working on site, coffee shop workers at the Robinson Funeral Home in Easley, S.C., will be Starbucks-trained baristas and will offer the coffee chain’s official menu. And it’s not just for those grieving. The new coffee shop will also be available to the public through a patio entrance, in case you feel like swinging by a funeral home to relax and read a book while sipping an espresso.
“You walk in the front, and it’s off to the side,” Chris Robinson, general manager of the Robinson Funeral Home, told local TV station WSPA. “It’s not like it’s right up front.”
The “Coffee Corner,” which is on the opposite end of the funeral grounds away from the chapel, will also have a fireplace and television, and the funeral home’s owners hope it will give the bereaved another way to cope.
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“It should help families escape from the stress a little bit, having a private area to get their minds off of what’s going on,” Robinson told ABC News.
Even though Robinson Funeral Home has been serving free coffee for years, the funeral home’s recent renovations got the owner to thinking that it could use something different. “If we’re going to offer a Coffee Corner, we’re going to get the best there is,” he said.
Robinson said the new coffee shop is in keeping with the history of the funeral home, which has been in his family for generations and initially started inside a main street general store, where people gathered and drank coffee.
The funeral home’s free coffee will still be available, even after the Starbucks brew goes on sale starting in August.