ARLINGTON, Texas — The McDonald’s on Cooper Street in Arlington serves the same coffee as any McDonald’s in America.
Just don’t tell that to Joe Littleton.
“I would tell anybody in the country there’s something in this McDonald’s coffee at this particular McDonald’s that keeps you wanting to come back,” Littleton said.
It was so good, in fact, Littleton just had to tell somebody about it.
“Taste this coffee,” Littleton said he told another customer. “And they tasted the coffee, then I went to the next guy, he went to the next guy and he taste the coffee. All of a sudden we started getting into a huddle and we started talking and we started getting to be friends.”
Nearly 20 years later, the group is still talking about coffee and pretty much whatever else spills out.
“I wore shorts in here yesterday and I got whistled at,” Robert Bowen laughed.
They show up five days a week, often sitting for hours at a time. They’ve become such a fixture in the restaurant, employees call them "the board of directors." It’s a title that comes with no responsibility, but tremendous influence.
“Seeing them come in every day, what I’ve learned from that is you always have to be welcoming to others, be kind to others,” Austin Grissett, McDonald’s supervisor said.
“Yeah, we all have different ideas and we accept them,” Bowen said. “But we also have a lot of commonality.”
“We have to be able to agree and disagree and still be friends,” said Littleton.
They still love a good roast, but it’s become more than coffee. It’s about the bond they now share. The guys who were once strangers are now family.
“If anybody had a problem, if John goes to the hospital, we go,” Bowen said.
“These guys can come to my house,” Littleton said. “My door’s open, walk in my house, open the refrigerator and get a biscuit out of there. And if I ain’t got a biscuit, get a piece of bologna!”
Even the staff treats them like family. When the group’s oldest member, James Stevens, recently turned 90, the owners surprised him with a party.
Coffee is just coffee, unless it gives you the ability to pour into each other.
“When you have people and you gather people together in a community and they share some differences and even share some similarities with them, it just makes the coffee a little more special,” Grissett said.
Perhaps the best coffee in America.