I made a trip down to Ozark, Alabama to visit family recently and on my way home, I noticed a new little coffee shop had opened up since the last time I'd been down. I'm a big fan of coffee shops, but Ozark has never had a very good track record when it comes to them – I decided to pop in to check out the Holy Cow Bakery and Coffee Shop.
Located on the corner of Andrews Avenue and Dees Road, Holy Cow is really in a good location – they can catch a fair amount of traffic going to and from Fort Rucker. Their sign isn't very noticeable, however, so if you don't know to look for it, it's easy to pass by. It seems to be a family-run operation, and the staff are friendly, but not very talkative.
The coffee is lackluster at best. The coffee is served in an open-top glass coffee pot, the kind that keeps the coffee hot by heating it from below – even at 10 a.m., it had that sort of overcooked taste that under-the-pot burners give coffee. Holy Cow uses Maxwell House coffee – not exactly the brand I think of when I think of a coffee shop. If I wanted Maxwell House, I could make it in my coffee pot back home. Even the cups feel flimsy – I couldn't get the lid to stay on my cup properly. The only thing really going for Holy Cow's coffee is the price – at $1.25 for a small cup, it's probably the cheapest coffee around, but I've seen other coffee shops with a similar price that offer much better coffee.
Don't expect to find any espresso products like mochas or lattes – Holy Cow does have a cappuccino machine, if you could call it that, but it's one of those automatic cappuccino machines you find at the back of gas stations. Creamer (a non-dairy, unrefridgerated kind) is available, but I didn't see any sort of half-and-half or skim milk available. Being a bakery, though, I'm sure you could probably ask the staff for some.
There's no WiFi, and not even really anywhere to sit down – there were two or three small tables, but when I was in the shop, one of them was taken up by a lady that I asssume was a relative or maybe one of the staff members on break – she didn't seem to be a customer, at any rate. In short, I can't say that I really consider Holy Cow to be a coffee shop in any sense of the word that I'm familiar with – it seems more like a bakery that happens to offer a very rudimentary coffee.
I didn't try any of the baked goods, but the place does have the pleasant smell of baking muffins and cookies and the like. I really hope the shop can pull in enough business from their baked goods to stay open, but I think they need to drop the coffee shop part of their name – Holy Cow is a bakery that just happens to offer a very rudimentary coffee while customers wait for their baked goods.
