Morning Light Coffee Shop

You’re in Great Falls, Montana.  You need a cup of coffee.  You head east on 10th Avenue South, the main commercial strip, looking for that coveted cup of joe, and you spot a Starbucks.  What do you do?  Do you stop?

NO!  You quickly turn left onto 9th Street and drive down several blocks until you find Morning Light Coffee, the social, cultural, and maybe even geographic center of Great Falls, Montana.  I started coming to Morning Light a few years ago, when I’d come back to Great Falls during breaks from school.  My cousin, Nicole, has worked here on and off, and it’s through her that I learned about the shop.  I needed some coffee, so I came down.  Now that I live in Great Falls, I spend all of my social time here.  (That’s partly because so far I have few friends to speak of, but it’s really a great place to go anyway.)

Morning Light doesn’t look like your standard coffee shop.  The decor is pretty eclectic.  It’s not granola-earthy-chic, like so many other coffee spots.  (Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a sucker for granola-earthy-chic.)  There’s a surprising amount of red on the walls which can get a little distracting but doesn’t take away from the comfort of the cozy old space, which use to be a bakery.  The flags of coffee-producing nations hanging on the walls give it an international flair without an unnecessarily apologetic American flag to appease the symbolically patriotic.  However, there is no obvious political slant to the shop and I have had a number of discussions here with people from all areas of the political sphere.

You can choose to sit at the bar or at a table.  A lot of people show up in groups and pull several tables together.  You can sit and talk for hours and if you want some privacy, there is a quiet back room.  Like all community centers, the main reason to come is the people - the customers, the employees, and the managers - but the coffee alone is reason to keep coming back.    My favorite is La Minita, but if I’m looking for something richer I like the Cowboy.  They always have a dark roast, a light roast, and a decaf ready for drinking, but you can purchase any of their varieties in ground or bean form.

One of their roasting machines is on site and it’s cool to watch their roaster, Jude, run the machine.  I understand that they have a separate site with more machines where they do a lot of their wholesale work.  I’ll leave the technical details to them, but trust me when I say that they’re good at what they do.

I can’t find mention of it on their website, but one of the baristas told me that all the coffee they sell is good-conscience, meaning it was produced on farms that respect their workers and participate in fair trade.  I really strongly recommend that you come here if you’re ever in town.  It’s a wonderful place and well-worth your time and money.