Red Cups and Coffee With My Dad - November 07, 2026

The little holiday red cups are back, and all of a sudden I’m thinking about getting coffee with my dad. I’m sitting in a grocery store parking lot in the North Carolina mountains, in an out-of-control amount of sunshine, and thinking about the little things I wish I’d kept.

A quick invitation, too. My Kaigi is November 14. Come spend three hours with me looking back at your year and planting a few seeds for the next one. Use NAPODPOMO for 50% off.

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I’m sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot. It’s about 9 a.m.

There is something so amazing about coming to this grocery store where I live, because it is nestled, literally, in the mountains of North Carolina. My husband always calls it the most beautiful grocery store in the world, because you really, you come in here and you’re just in awe. Not because the grocery store is any different, but because it is just surrounded by beauty.

And the beauty that is here right now, with the trees and all the things. It’s a lovely day. So much sunshine. It’s out of control.

Oh, so I came in this morning. I walk in, and of course there’s a Starbucks, like, right in the middle of—right when you open the doors, there’s a Starbucks. But y’all, the red cups are back. The little holiday red cups.

And I know there’s all of the things, right? There’s all of the things that we know about Starbucks. And you have to understand that I’m a—I really do absolutely adore coffee, especially good coffee. I’m a little bit of a coffee, a little bit of a coffee snob.

Although I’m also equally as excited to go get gas station coffee with the little creamer things with the flavors on it, because it’s so few and far between in my house—in my, you know, in my life—that it kind of brings back some memories. Not that I would have it all the time, but it’s like, “Oh yeah, I remember this,” right? It just hits different.

But these red cups, it’s that also.

And even though I will—especially living where I live, the area that I live is Asheville, North Carolina, and that is the place where local is king. Local is the majesty. Local is the thing you do.

In fact, there is probably—I could count, at least I can think of two Starbucks in the city. I’m sure that there’s more, but they are not… It’s a different type of vibe in this town. There are many local, amazing coffee shops in Asheville, by the way.

That said, I’m coming back to the red cups because they are extraordinarily meaningful to me. And not because of the coffee itself, but because of the memories of it all.

I started to go to Starbucks, I think, or started to be a little bit more aware of going out to get coffee after I left home to go to college, to the university. Obviously, I was gone for the first time, away from my house, and I would always come back for the holidays.

And one of the rituals that I used to have was going to get coffee with my dad.

Good Lord, I didn’t think I was gonna get so emotional about it.

This is where I cried a little.

It was my favorite thing. I got a chance to talk with him, and we would catch up. It was like he was talking to me like I was an adult for the very first time.

Obviously, I’m always gonna be his little girl. But it was the first time we got to… I don’t know. There are no words to say how special it is for me to go get coffee with my dad.

We always went to Starbucks because it was so close to the house where they live. And the red cups always brought that back. And even without red cups, even without red cups, we go to Starbucks and we sit down and we catch up.

It’s the memory. It’s the story. It’s the life in those little things that just makes me so happy to remember.

So y’all, the red cups are here. And there’s another thing I wish I would’ve done. I wish I’d kept either the red cups or the little hot thing that goes around the red cups. You know, the little whatever it is so that your hands don’t get burnt because the coffee’s so hot?

I wish I would’ve kept those. And I know that’s literally trash, but it would’ve been so wonderful for me to look at all the years.

They used to be a lot better, by the way. The designs of the red cups used to be everything. I was always floored. Whenever the holiday season stuff from Starbucks would come, I would say even like 20 years ago, between 20 and 25 years ago, their branding for the holidays was on point. It was top-notch in every single way.

Even the quality of the cups was different. The way that everything was designed was different. There was a theme that was way bigger than “holiday season,” right? There was something else about those red cups that was so much more beautiful.

So I wish I would’ve kept some of those, because some of the designs were just so beautiful. And it’s also a way to, like, there’s an element of proof of life.

Which is—I’m actually bringing this back to my planning experience that I’m doing. Seven days, people! Seven days to go for you to join me, and we could do this.

There is a planner that’s super hot right now. And of course I was a little early to the party, so I’m already over the hotness of this planner. But it’s called a Hobonichi, and I started using those in 2019. And I think 2021 or ’22—anyway, one of those years, I did this amazing thing where I would put every piece of literal trash in there. Receipts, you know, torn pieces of paper from the things that I used on that day.

Obviously, not every day had that in there, but a lot of it did. And keeping those little pieces of “trash” in the journal makes it so special. Now when I look back at it, it has all these pieces in it, and I distinctly know exactly where they came from.

It brings me right back to where I was then. It makes me remember that I’ve lived, that I’ve been places, that I’ve experienced things. And it takes the ordinary into this extraordinary, magical package that I now have.

And it really has fueled, I think, my capacity to fill an entire year with the work that I do at the end of the year through My Kaigi. Kaigi means “meeting,” and your kaigi is a meeting with yourself. So you’re meeting yourself. You can look back at the year and start to plant the seeds for the next in a way that’s super grounded and organic to living your life.

There’s a lot of that that goes into this that isn’t necessarily just strategic planning to be productive, because I hate that stuff.

Anywho, thanks for coming along with me on the journey with the red cup, y’all.

So again, remember there is a 50% off code for My Kaigi. Come spend three hours with me next Saturday, a week from today.

And Danny and I from Captivate (aff) are doing Office Hours on Wednesday. We’re so excited to kind of talk about end-of-year stuff also, because there’s some tooling that I think is underused by a lot of people who happen to use podcasting, and I’m so excited to talk about it.

All right, talk back. Email me at hello@elsieescobar.com or leave me a voicemail on SpeakPipe.

Links mentioned

• My Kaigi — November 14, 2026. Use NAPODPOMO for 50% off.
• Hobonichi Techo
• Captivate Office Hours — Wednesday, November 11, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern
• Captivate (aff)
• Email me at hello@elsieescobar.com
• Leave me a voicemail on SpeakPipe

Recording notes

Recorded in the car in the grocery store parking lot, around 9 a.m., on my iPhone 13 mini. Processed in Auphonic.