‘Appetizing to the eyes’: Muggies, a ‘viral’ coffee experience, expands farther north

As seen on TikTok and Instagram, Spokane’s “for the girls” coffee shop, Muggies, opened a new, bright pink drive-thru Oct. 18 on West Hastings Road.

Hundreds of people queued up opening day, with a social media post showing cars wrapping from the stand’s single window, down Hastings and around the corner onto Mill Road.

Owner Madison Hare said baristas served up 1,296 drinks that Saturday morning, the most popular being their upside-down strawberry matcha, salted honey butter latte and caramelized strawberry latte.

“It was surreal. I did not expect that turnout,” she said. “We were definitely staffed just in case for it, but Spokane showed up in an unreal way.”

The stand is the second brick-and-mortar Muggies location, the first located on Garland Avenue between Oak and Ash streets. Hare also operates a mobile stand for servicing events.

“We really pride ourselves on making drinks that are different than what anybody else is doing,” Hare said. “Something that I think has made us popular is making drinks that are viral looking, so like, appetizing to the eye.”

A couple months ago, a few customers made a 20 hour drive down from Canada just to try the Muggies drinks they saw on Instagram, Hare said. On Wednesday, customer Michelle Arias made the trip from Deer Park for her morning salted maple latte.

“Obviously the aesthetics I think, like the pink,” Arias, 31, said. “It’s really cute. The coffees that they post, the flavors sound really good and kind of up my alley.”

Intending to become a Muggies regular, Arias picked up a punch card along with her drink. She said she will bring her fiancé along with her the next chance she gets.

While Muggies is “definitely for the girls” Hare said (“Obviously the pink, right? Like, you can’t deny that.”), many men tag along with their partners.

“We love our Muggies men,” she said. “And Muggies men love Muggies.”

Coffee and people are her passion, she said, having become a barista at age 18. Outside of her growing place in the Spokane coffee scene, Hare is a full-time wedding photographer.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and people in Spokane stopped having as many weddings, she was forced to pivot.

“I was like, ‘OK, I have to think smarter.’ I know that I can go back into coffee,” she said. “And then I got back into it and loved this specific stand so much, it like resonated with me.”

The specific stand Hare worked at was called Mug Shots Espresso. As the rules of the pandemic began to lessen in 2022, though, her wedding photography career picked up steam again. She packed up from her north Spokane home and hit the road for San Diego.

A year and a half later, Mug Shots went up for sale. Unable to pass up the opportunity, Hare bought the stand, turning it into the first official Muggies – a name inspired by the nickname of the old shop.

“So I did 50% in San Diego, 50% here. Traveled back every weekend for my job and then kind of built this as I was going,” she said, adding that the coffee stand social media manager Presley Petragallo was her dog and house sitter in Spokane. “It was intense, like 80-hour work weeks. But I knew that’s what I had to do in order to fund the dream.”

The days of weekly cross-country traveling have come to an end for Hare, who moved back to Spokane full time.

“I love the socialness that I didn’t necessarily get at weddings, because I shoot like 20 weddings a year whereas I love seeing people every day, and making an impact on their day was like the most important thing to me – on a small scale, right?” she said. “Because we have some regulars that they see us more than they see their family, and so I wanted to make that impact on their lives of kindness.”

“Kindness is our mission and the reason why we are – like, that’s what drives us. And so we wanted to pack kindness into every single cup of coffee that we serve.”