MOUNTLAKE TERRACE
His day starts at 5 a.m. weekdays.
By 7 a.m., Troy Malchow has already served dozens of cups of coffee to drivers who stop at his Perfetto Espresso drive-up window at the corner of 244th Street Southwest and 56th Avenue West, the southernmost edge of the city.
A man driving an SUV ordered several drinks.
“You want me to put a little whip cream on top for the hot chocolate?” Malchow asked, as he worked the espresso machine while preparing a hot chocolate. He knows many customers by their first names.
“I just like dealing with everybody and getting to know everybody,” Malchow said.
Customers have been especially generous lately, Malchow said. He’s asked them to help a Port Angeles family: Kim Springfield and her daughter Kaylee, both have cancer. Drivers have responded with more than $2,700 in donations.
“I saw their story in the news,” said Malchow, himself the father of two young children. “I basically saw myself in the father’s shoes.”
Ten years ago, he opened for business in his 10-foot by 12-foot enclosed stand, which is a step up from the cart he started with in 1997 as a new business owner with no coffee background to speak of.
“I was scared to death the day before we opened,” said Malchow, who lives with his wife and children nearby in Shoreline.
Business generally peaks early in the morning, then starts to slow down by 10 a.m. Malchow holds down the fort until relief shows up at 12:30 p.m.
People still order the same drinks they always did but ask for bigger ones.
“Our sales — the number of drinks we sell — actually are a little less than a few years ago but they’re asking for bigger drinks,” he said. “People are disappointed when I tell them that’s all we have.”
He says he’s amazed by the number of people he’s gotten to know over the years, many of them repeat customers. Thirty-second District state Rep. Ruth Kagi, D-Lake Forest Park, stops by frequently, as do Seattle, Shoreline and Mountlake Terrace police officers.
All those contacts have led him to some interesting perks.
He once was invited on an excursion aboard a yacht owned by Lane Sapp, the millionaire who ran subprime lender MILA, which had a Mountlakle Terrace office until it went out of business last year.
“He used to come in here every day in his Bentley,” Malchow said.
Then there’s the business contacts. He’s bartered with neighboring business owners — sending them business and receiving business in return. The mechanic across the street is one.
“I’ve sent them probably thousands of dollars in business,” he said.
Crime was never an issue until Valentine’s Day 2007, when a man Malchow described as skinny walked up to him, displayed a gun and made off with the cash in his till. It was the first time he’d been robbed in 10 years. The suspect still has not been apprehended.
“It was over just like that,” Malchow recalled, snapping his fingers. “I knew what he wanted.”
Just an hour earlier, Malchow had been chatting about robberies with a police officer.
He’d even discussed the robbery with the manager of a nearby bank in Shoreline.
“Like an hour and a half later, her bank was robbed,” he recalled.
That robbery was followed by a mere two weeks with an incident in which a man had been hanging out at the intersection, hassling pedestrians and businesses. The man even threw a brick at Perfetto Espresso, breaking glass and leaving Malchow with a cleanup mess.
“I probably spent 10 to 12 hours cleaning up the mess that guy made throwing stuff all over the place,” Malchow said.
Malchow says he’d like to spend less time serving coffee drinks and has thought about finding someone to manage the business, especially now that he and his wife are expecting a third child.
“I’d love to come in a couple of hours a week and see everybody,” he said.
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