Janet Franz of the Trib has an article featuring cranky restaurant owners who don’t want outside beverages (read Starbucks) in their establishments.

Um, I didn’t know the Tribune served the interest of restaurant owners…I thought it was all about the readers, or as Sam Zell has been saying (along with a few four letter words), if the readers want puppies, or in this case, their morning Starbuck’s, you better listen to ‘em.

Ina Pinkney says she’s offended because she serves better Intelligentsia coffee. Ina’s grandmother shtick is so fake. Don’t pretend it’s not about the bottom line. I guarantee you if a customer walked in with Intelligentsia, she’s still mad because she couldn’t make 300% mark-ups on her own Intelly blend.

If these breakfast restaurant owners can guarantee they won’t pen me in like cattle and make me wait an hour for a table, only to try and kick me out thirty minutes later, because they have to turn, turn, turn the table, then I promise not to bring in outside java.

Last Sunday, I brought a group of 8 to Meli Cafe in Greektown. The hostess first ignored me. Then she laughed as I persisted and said we’d take two tables for four, and responded “Well, you’re gonna have to wait a long time.”

That long time was less than ten minutes, though more than enough to finish my morning coffee from elsewhere. Then owner Nikos Karabelas asked us if everyone in our party was here. We said, yes. He responded, “They better be, because if we go over to that table and you’re not all here, I’ll take that table away.”

Once he finished treating us like rented mules, we sat down and ordered well over a hundred dollars worth of food. Then twenty-five minutes later he came back over and said, “Are you ordering anything else, because if not I need you to leave, because I need this table.”

Now I’m not saying Ina Pinkney and the other restaurants in this article don’t treat their patrons with respect, but breakfast and brunch owners as a general group have turned the tables in terms of the customer being right (even some of the time), and as long as they continue down this path, I don’t begrudge anyone who brings in their own coffee.