To small town, this coffee's just bad

Associated Press

ANTIOCH, Ill. — Strong coffee that jolts like a donkey's kick is fine; just don't call it "Bad Ass."

That's the message the village board and some residents are sending a man trying to open a franchise of the Bad Ass Coffee Co. of Hawaii chain in their small town just south of the Wisconsin border.

The 15-year-old coffee chain says the name's harmless and honors the donkeys that once hauled coffee beans up and down the mountainsides of Kona.

The village board reads it a bit differently.

"The shop's name is found to be utterly vulgar; to be highly offensive to ordinary moral sensibilities of this community and to be repugnant to the entire concept of family values and traditional American ideals," read a resolution the board passed 5-1 on Monday.

"I wouldn't go in there if they had the best coffee in the world," said Antioch resident Marge Tedemanson, 70. "I think it's asinine."

That frosty reception aside, village officials concede they can't do anything to stop the shop from opening.

Franchise owner Tony Liotta, who estimated his startup and franchise costs at $250,000, said he plans to be pouring coffee by January.

The chain's name has drawn similar reactions elsewhere, said Mike Bilanzich, president of Salt Lake City-based Bad Ass Coffee Co. of Hawaii.

"The normal course of things is we experience exactly this kind of uproar, and generally the end result is, 'Gee, guys, this is a real word, this isn't something we can do anything about so we've got to allow them to open up,' " Bilanzich said.

"In every instance it has died down and we've continued on running a successful coffee shop," he said.

Liotta, a resident of Lindenhurst, thinks some of the anger in Antioch may stem from worries about a housing boom in the town about 50 miles north of Chicago and expected rise in population, now about 8,800.

"They've been a small town for a long time," he said.

It's also probably part misunderstanding, he said.

"We're not promoting any body part," Liotta said. "It is about the donkeys."