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SEATTLE (AP) - It's hard to find a bad cup of coffee in Seattle, and that's not just because it seems like there's a Starbucks — or two or three — on every corner.
Although more than 100 of the ubiquitous green awnings dot the big coffee corporation's hometown alone, local favorites such as Zoka Coffee, Diva Espresso and Caffe Ladro are proving it's possible to survive and even thrive in the shadow of their much larger corporate competitor.
As other towns worry that Starbucks Corp. will run their local favorites out of business and rob their streets of quirky charm, the owners of several of Seattle's most beloved independent coffee houses say they have found success by going the opposite route of their big competitor — making a selling point of being small.
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