Bad Ass Coffee on Fort Myers Beach aspires to be more than just another grab-and-go coffeehouse, says Jason Thomas. He’s director of operations for South Florida.
“We're really hoping to become a neighborhood gathering spot, more of a community center.”
With a name like Bad Ass, Thomas knows a little something about branding. The shop’s blank southern exterior wall gave him an idea.
“The first time I drove up and I saw that big white wall, I thought, wow, that is not pleasant. It's kind of an eyesore,” said Thomas.
Thomas also understands the power of public art for creative placemaking.
“I spoke with my wife a little bit and we talked about doing like a '50s, '60s style postcard kind of thing,” Thomas said. “My wife got online and she goes, do you know there's a Fort Myers Mural Society? Of course there is. Why wouldn't there be?”
The mural society put Thomas in touch with artist Erik Schlake. Thomas had a few requirements.
“We wanted to have Fort Myers Beach and big letters across the top so that it's tied into the town more so than just as a Bad Ass billboard sign,” Thomas noted. “We included the Times Square clock. We've got one of the shrimp boats painted on the horizon.”
From the moment Schlake started the mural, it generated considerable social media buzz. People began posting selfies and daily progress reports.
“I couldn't be happier with the work that he did,” said Thomas. “It's been a great collaboration.”
The ribbon cutting was last Thursday. Nearly two dozen local people turned out to enjoy the completed Bad Ass mural … and a cup of Bad Ass coffee.
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“Bad Ass Coffee started in 1989 on the Big Island of Hawaii,” said Thomas. “It started as a mom-and-pop kind of store and became wildly successful.”
The founders had a simple goal – to share American-grown, premium Hawaiian coffee from Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Moloka‘i, Kona and Ka’u with coffee lovers everywhere.
According to the Bad Ass website, it didn’t take long for the legend of Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii to reach the mainland as tourists began to bring their new favorite coffee, hats and T-shirts home and spread the word about their Hawaiian Bad Ass experience.
“As wildly successful mom-and-pops start out, franchisors start showing up and knocking on the door,” said Thomas, picking up the story from there. “They said, hey, we'd really like to grow this concept. They said, fantastic, let's do that.”
A new legend was born.
“The company that runs the group is Royal Aloha, and they're based in Denver. We’re growing wildly. So we're at, I think, about 37 stores right now, and we're going to be up to about 50 by the end of next year.”
Bad Ass Coffee serves premium Hawaiian and other top international coffees with a kick – but Bad Ass Coffee franchises don’t stop there. They also serve popular blended drinks, teas, food and branded merchandise with exceptional service.
“So the coffee blend we carry 100% Kona coffee in bean and in grind, so that you can purchase that for home,” Thomas said. “We also serve that here in the shop. But we also have coffee blends that come in with Kona blends and then Brazilian and Colombian beans. Depending on the market, the way it's going right now, we're trying to make sure to stay cost-effective with the tariffs so that we don't have to raise our prices, but keep our quality the same and keep our flavor profile the same."
The Fort Myers Beach location opened July 2.
“We're very excited to be part of the beach at this time, when the growth is really starting to pick back up and people are coming back to the island,” Thomas added. “We chose this location down here on the south end of the island so that we could be here more for the residents than the tourist crowd.”
While the coffees are the big attraction, Thomas expects the mural to become an artistic landmark that helps identify their location, especially people coming onto Fort Myers Beach from Lovers Key and points south.
Muralist Erik Schlake knew from the outset that Thomas wanted a statement piece.
“Being a franchise from another area, Jason wanted to make sure that it was more about Fort Myers Beach than anything else,” Schlake recalled. “When I first came out to meet him, I noticed the van. To me, the van just spoke of such a time period from the past that Fort Myers Beach and every beach town in America had during that era.”
For Schlake, it was the perfect marriage of the Bad Ass brand and a symbol of of what everybody loves most about the beach.
“And his idea of adding in the Fort Myers Beach clock was just another little nod to Fort Myers Beach,” said Schlake.
The addition of the Times Square clock was more than a nod to Fort Myers Beach. It was Thomas’ recognition of the important role the clock plays in Fort Myers Beach’s own branding. It does not merely serve as backdrop for selfies and photo ops by residents and visitors. It has become a symbol of Fort Myers Beach, particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, whose surge ripped the clock from its base on Sept. 28, 2022.
During its absence [a new clock was manufactured and installed by the Verdin Company and Kelly General Contracting on Sept. 14, 2023], the Times Square Clock was the subject of daily inquiries and status updates across social media platforms. As before its destruction, the Times Square Clock stands as a Fort Myers Beach tradition and symbol of stability, resilience and community.
In the mural’s background is a shrimp boat on the horizon, but Schlake was actually going in a different direction at first.
“My original idea was to include the mountains of Hawaii [in the background], almost as if the Fort Myers Beach clock had been flown to Hawaii,” Schlake said. “But as we talked further, it became clear that Jason wanted to limit the Hawaii reference. So we eliminated the mountains and added the shrimp boat to give it more of a reflection of where we are.”
Long before the Times Square Clock, Fort Myers Beach was associated with pink shrimp. Called “pink gold” in shrimping lore, pinks were discovered off Fort Myers Beach in 1949. The shrimping industry flourished in the aftermath of that discovery until the 1970s, when the industry faced a downturn due to rising fuel costs and challenges from foreign fisheries. By the time Hurricane Ian struck, the shrimp fleet had shrunk from 1,500 boats in the ‘70s to just 43 vessels, owned by Trico Shrimp and Erickson & Jensen. All but one were washed ashore by Ian’s record-setting surge. Like the Times Square Clock, their restoration and return to active duty is yet another symbol to Fort Myers Beach residents and the world beyond of stability, resilience and recovery.
Schlake was mindful of the importance of both symbols to Fort Myers Beach residents. He is also well aware that the best public artworks are those which are site-specific, namely, that incorporate stories about local history and traditions.
On the mainland, Schlake has participated in the river basin mural project in downtown Fort Myers, the Buck’s Backyard Mural at historic McCollum Hall and a number of other Fort Myers Mural Society projects. On Estero Island, he painted murals for Margaritaville and a number of other business locations.
That was important to Thomas.
“I literally had no idea of how to put something like that together,” said Thomas. “I went on Pinterest and just cut up a couple of things and said, this is the idea or this is the feel we’re going for, and Erik took it from there.”
The Bad Ass mural was more than a collaboration between Thomas, Schlake and the Fort Myers Mural Society. Thomas involved the community early on.
“We presented it to the town,” Thomas noted. “The vice mayor came out and said, 'wow, I love it.' People behind Santini Plaza turned around and they said, 'this is fantastic. Run with it.' We got the permit and we went off to town.”
The mural was completed in just two weeks. Thomas said that its completion would have likely occurred sooner but for rain days.
Schlake had help. The artist had been seriously injured in a fall from a ladder while working on another mural and is still suffering from visual impairment in both eyes. So, muralists Deb Lawless, Holland King and Roland Ruocco stepped forward to assist.
“As a team, we employed a number of different techniques that are typically used in mural painting,” Schlake noted. “One of them is mural cloth, which is a synthetic fiber that you can paint on and then adhere to the wall permanently.”
Schlake used mural cloth for the van. That enabled him to render that image in the controlled environment of his studio. It wasn’t just the air-conditioning, Schlake said. The artificial light in the studio was much gentler than working in direct sunlight given his eye injuries, which include a retinal tear. Working inside on mural cloth also enabled Schlake to achieve the realism for which he’s been known over the course of his career.
“Working on mural cloth also meant less time on site, which was less intrusive to their business,” Schlake added.
Whether painted on mural cloth or directly on the concrete wall, Schlake and his fellow artists had to restrict their palette and implement other measures that take into account the mural’s southern exposure.
“On a southern exposure, we had to be very, very careful of the colors that we use,” Schlake noted. “There are pigments like reds or even yellows that they don't hold up well outdoors, so we had to be very cognizant of what pigments that we're using.”
The artists will apply UV and anti-graffiti protection, but that alone will not suffice to prevent fading where colors like red, bright orange and yellow are used.
“You never want to rely on the topcoat for protection, because if the topcoat fails, you can't really tell because everything's happening on a microscopic level. So working with paints that last longer in the sun is a key element. That’s why we always take the time to research and find those pigments that work best for a southern exposure.”
That’s not to say that the topcoat isn’t important.
It is.
“The topcoat we use is very, very durable,” Schlake noted. “It actually melts the paint and turns it into a hard plastic that gives it a lot better UV protection. So, I kind of feel like for Florida on a southern exposure, it's the absolute best that we can do, and I'm confident that it's gonna last for many, many years.”
When artists combine to work on a single project, there’s always a risk that the imagery will look disjointed. Not so with the Bad Ass mural.
“Through our previous projects, we've all kind of learned each other's styles and we've all become cognizant of how each other paints,” Schlake remarked. “I think that over the course of multiple projects, it's allowed us to create something that looks completely uniform, where you can't tell that there's multiple hands on it. It looks very, very cohesive. So kudos to my fellow artists, and a big kudo to the mural society for having these type of projects and being able to bring multiple artists together, to get them to learn from each other and get them to work on projects like this.”
Bad Ass Coffee is located in the Santini Plaza on the south end of Estero Island.
“We're open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” Thomas said. “We are dog-friendly, and we encourage everybody to come on in. We have breakfast and lunch sandwiches, pastries, cookies. In addition, we'll be doing events coming up. The farmers market will be picking back up here in Santini Plaza, I believe, in December, which will be Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, we're just real excited about being here and looking forward to being more involved with Fort Myers Beach and the residents and seeing what else we can do.”
Thomas hastened to add a point of historical clarification.
“The name badass is not what people think,” Thomas said, laughing. “It is the name for the donkeys that bring the beans down out of the mountains in Hawaii. The stronger donkeys that could carry a heavier load were also apparently a little stubborn, so the locals who worked with the donkeys, called them bad asses, and it just kind of stuck. People also loved the name, so that's where the name originated.”
Now we all know.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
