We can­’t help feel­ing a little bit pleased that one of the Star­bucks on Lamb­ton Quay has closed, and been replaced by a shiny new Mojo:

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This is the new Mojo Ori­gins, out the front of Lamb­ton Square, behind a schist facade that some years ago had been put togeth­er for an earli­er ten­ant, Rodd & Gunn.

Pre­dict­ably enough, when this SBUX­ec­tomy was men­tioned on Twit­ter some of the responses were less than com­pli­ment­ary to Mojo. “Repla­cing one chain with anoth­er” seemed to be the refrain; and that might be tech­nic­ally true. How­ever, for many reas­ons Mojo is no Star­bucks, with two of the most rel­ev­ant being:

  1. Mojo cof­fee is con­sist­ently very good.
  2. Each Mojo is allowed to be dif­fer­ent.

Ori­gins’ point of dif­fer­ence is the cof­fee. Just like Peoples, Cof­fee Supreme’s Cus­toms, and Mem­ph­is Belle before them, Mojo is adding to their usu­al lineup of espresso based drinks by join­ing the brewed cof­fee trend… but unlike their com­pet­it­ors they’re tak­ing it to a flag­ship shop on Wel­ling­ton’s busiest shop­ping street. For what is at present a some­what hip­ster­ish obses­sion primar­ily enjoyed by cof­fee wonks who don’t seem to mind traipsing to the funki­er ends of town for their fix this is reas­on­ably ballsy of Mojo.

Along with the brews they’re also high­light­ing their single-ori­gin beans. From later this week they’ll be offer­ing (hope­fully with a choice of bean) Chemex filtered cof­fee, and Siphon-brewed cof­fee. The Siphons in par­tic­u­lar are recom­men­ded for their theatre; while this Wel­ling­tonista prefers the Chemex for taste.

Mojo’s interi­ors are also usu­ally worth a bit of inspec­tion. This one seems a little under-designed by their usu­al stand­ards. But between the map on the back wall, the pal­lets used as fur­niture, and the buck­ets of roas­ted cof­fee there is a little bit of an indus­tri­al vibe here graf­ted onto a busy high-street café. It’s even a little remin­is­cent of Mojo “Cof­fee Cent­ral”.

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So, there we have it. Anoth­er new Mojo, and one worth a stop by to try out the new brews, and the only place in the Lamb­ton “Quarter” offer­ing such cof­fee-mak­ing meth­ods.

Let’s hope it suc­ceeds, and encour­ages our oth­er loc­al Wel­ling­ton region­al “chains” to invade the high streets and shop­ping areas, and thereby purge the town of all the Star­bucks, Esquires, Glor­ia Jeans, and Cof­fee Clubs. The cof­fee cap­it­al we shall truly be!