His dad wore polos and khakis to work, so Eric Nicol steps behind the counter sporting a wrinkled button-down and skinny black jeans, his rolled-up sleeves revealing tattoo-adorned arms. His parents drove a minivan and played it safe, so Nicol moved around and joined a punk-rock band. His mom was a teacher, so Nicol works here – at The Principal’s Office.

“It comes down to this: We like to do what our parents didn’t do,” Nicol said.

This is the rallying cry of The Principal’s Office, a coffee shop by day and speakeasy-esque cocktail bar by night, where Nicol is the “principal” – or, in old-school terms, the manager.

Nicol has worked in coffee shops for a decade and he’s seen the craving for craft coffee steadily grow.

“Things like Starbucks happened and made it very convenient and accessible for people to get to know the coffee industry,” Nicol said. “But it’s evolved so much since then.”

It’s official: Mainstream’s moment is over.

“Craft culture is a shift from everything we consumed growing up,” said Nicol, who worked at Colorado Coffee Merchants before joining The Principal’s Office two years ago. “We want things that are the opposite of mass. We want that one finite experience.”

Nicol, along with his team of baristas, applies that “opposite of mass” mindset to everything at the shop – whether it’s ordering coffee beans from nearby farms or buying fresh fruit to squeeze into a rum cocktail called “Catholic School Girl.”

This is not the coffee ordered from drive-through windows, found in grocery aisles or stockpiled in your parents’ kitchen cabinets.

“When you start to appreciate the higher-quality drink and the flavors, I don’t think you can really go back,” he said.

It might seem like the workers at The Principal’s Office are judging your Dunkin’ Donuts plastic cup, but they don’t mean to.

“We’ve been trying to find the balance between not being pretentious and not being jerks, but also really taking what we do seriously,” said Tyler Hill, who’s a lead barista and co-manager. “I humbly believe we can stand up to some of the best shops in America and be up there on the list.”

But the majority of Hill’s spirit doesn’t come from mixing milks, foam and espresso – it lies in the history of his workplace.

The Principal’s Office is one of several shops that sit inside the doors of the former Ivywild Elementary School, which closed in 2009 and reopened as a “community marketplace” in 2013.

“When I think about the project, I think of a spirit of revival – it’s reviving this part of town that was kind of dying,” Hill said. “For the city as a whole, it’s reviving a standard of excellence.”

From the shop’s slogan – “libations for the troubled” – to its interior, filled with sections of chalkboard and chains that once hung on the school’s swing sets, The Principal’s Office doesn’t shy away from its academic roots.

“It’s ironic because it is a school, but we’re teaching people to appreciate craft and teaching the community to raise their standards,” said Hill, who hosts whiskey and coffee classes at the shop a few times a month.

“It’s an experience walking up those front steps, and we want everyone to get a taste of that.”

When Connor Crist, 23, moved to Colorado Springs for the summer, The Principal’s Office was one of his first stops.

“I walked in and was like, ‘Yep, I get a really cool feeling here,'” said Crist, an architecture student at Kansas State University. “This place shows how our culture is today. Instead of cheap and fast projects, we like to find something old and established and give it new life and a new story.”

Crist is one of many in the shop on this weekday morning, typing on laptops or chatting across from a friend, cup of coffee in hand.

“Sure, you can sit at home, but if you come here, you get to try something completely different and homemade,” Nicol said. “You don’t settle for something average.”

That’s the familiar motto. As regulars sit at the counter reading magazines and sipping lattes, one barista notices a new face. He stands behind the counter, dries off a white mug with a towel, and asks the customer, “Hey, what would you love today?”

Nope, not just “like” – maybe that was good enough for your parents.