Provision coffee started as a wholesale coffee roaster in 2011, and around 2015 co-owners Lawrence Jarvey and Dan Suh opened Provision’s first retail location. That location in Chandler has since closed down, and Provision’s new location on 32nd Street and East Campbell Ave. opened in July of 2018. Their new location is a sleek and modern coffee shop/ cocktail lounge that (for better or for worse) feels at home in the Arcadia area. While Provision offers a wide variety of hand crafted cocktails at this location, it’s the amount of care that goes into their coffee that keeps me coming back.
In addition to the typical coffee shop staples, Provision’s menu features a variety of coffee drinks that sounds like the punchline of a fussy coffee shop joke. Despite the borderline comical idea of getting a glass of cold brew with mole bitters topped with aromatic tobacco smoke, all the flavors manage to come together to create a beverage that is truly worth the fuss. After one sip of their drip coffee, you can tell these complex cocktails are used to compliment the hard work of their coffee roasters, and were not simply created to separate upper-class hipsters from their money.
While Provision offers some of the finest coffee in the valley, I do feel that the coffee shop is leaning a little too hard into its bourgeois surroundings. The clean aesthetic of the Arcadia location mixed with the complex menu, well dressed baristas, and overdressed customers creates a feeling of upper-class exclusivity. It doesn’t help that the coffee shop’s Instagram uses photos of a Lamborghini to advertise its Car Meet event. It’s probably smart to cater to clients that are near your locations (and have large amounts of expendable cash), but because of this atmosphere, I don’t really recommend Provision to people who are just craving a quality cup of coffee. While it can be said that other roasters in the valley come off as coffee snobs (Cartel), you typically just need to learn more about coffee to feel more welcome in those shops. For Arizona locals a stop at Provision feels like going to the Biltmore for the first time, when you typically shop at Arrowhead or Metrocenter Mall.
Arizona Eats 