If you’ve ever set foot in our office, chances are you had your pick of snacks. Whether it was for a client meeting or a check-in, a birthday or a Tuesday—there was always someone eating something. Despite the fact that we’ve been working remotely, the snacking didn’t stop.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GO-TO SNACK THIS PAST YEAR?

KAROLINA

There’s been so many. Which one? I can say that the latest one is called um, Skyr— it’s like a really thick yogurt. It’s like an Icelandic yogurt and there’s a cold brew flavor that’s super good. So I’ve been doing that—oh, and smoothies. Smoothies have sustained me mostly through quarantine.

EMILY

The snack that’s happening right now are those little honey mustard and onion pretzels that are kind of broken up. Soo good. I bought them semi-accidentally one time—I forgot to grab the regular kind of pretzels in the chip aisle and it was an end-cap impulse buy—and we ate them all in like, five minutes. And then my family just bought me some more for my birthday. So I’ve been eating them like they’ve been going out of style.

NIK

Snack would probably still remain pistachios.

JACKIE

I like Nonpareils, yeah. Little Nonpareils. I like those. Movie theater style especially.

SHAUN

One time we were out of snacks, and I wanted something salty, so I saw a cucumber in the fridge and cut it into thin slices and sprinkled a little bit of salt on them and my son and I ate them. And now he wants them all the time, so we usually eat them every other day as a light snack.

ALISA

I do. Cheese puffs. They’re called “Off the Eaten Path”—they’re chick pea cheddar puffs and they’re delicious.

SEAN

Apples. And Nature Valley bars.

WHAT KIND OF APPLES ARE WE TALKING?

SEAN

Red. I don’t eat green apples.

How are you eating these red apples?

SEAN

The thing about the apple is there’s no work involved. So like once you start cutting it up it becomes a meal.

BRENDON

I’ll tell you what’s in my trashcan right now. We’ve got a Famous Amos chocolate chip bite sized bag right here. We’ve got Girl Scout Cookies, so more cookies. (It’s a Thin Mint wrapper.) Then we’ve got the hundred calorie bag of Snyder’s Pretzels. Then the last one is the Naked bar. It’s like a Naked granola bar.

JEREMY

Oreos. Regular Oreos. Family pack. And I just have, like, a stack of three of them in my cabinet next to my desk.

WHAT’S YOUR TECHNIQUE FOR EATING THE OREOS?

JEREMY

I bite em in half and then drink some water to wash it down.

WHERE DO YOU STAND ON COOKIES & CREME OREOS?

JEREMY

I prefer the original ones. I think they got the balance of cookie to cream right in that. Sometimes I have to settle for double-stuffed ones. Occasionally I’ll get the vanilla ones but usually it’s regular Oreos.

WHAT’S EVERYONE’S CUP OF CHOICE? COFFEE, TEA, NEITHER?

BRENDON

I’m a tea guy when I didn’t sleep well. It depends. Caffeine affects me very negatively. I drink it hot, no sugar.

KAROLINA

Black coffee. Matcha lattes iced. Very easy. You just get powdered matcha, powdered green tea, add some milk.

JEREMY

Tea. Hot tea. We usually—we have a hot water heater thing and my roommate uses it to make french press coffee so whichever one of us gets to it first we’ll fill that up in the morning and I’ll pour from that.

RIDGE

I like the taste of coffee a lot but I don’t drink coffee.

JACKIE

Three Graces Coffee. I feel a kinship towards them because they opened up during the first few months of the pandemic.

EMILY

Starbucks has gotten me through this pandemic and I say that not at all jokingly. Every day, getting coffee is my chance to leave the house. Early on, I’d go through the drive thru and wipe the cup down and all that. Now, I can order ahead and run in and get it. It’s the one normal thing I did before the pandemic and can still do. I would not have survived this year without Starbucks.

WHAT’S YOUR STARBUCKS ORDER?

EMILY

Venti vanilla sweet cream cold brew with extra sweet cream, light ice.

BACK TO THE ORIGINAL QUESTION—COFFEE, TEA, BOTH?

DANA

I drink coffee in the morning and really until about 2 in the afternoon. I am very particular about my coffee. I have a French Press; there’s a whole meditative ritual that goes into creating it. I have to grind the beans, boil the water, put it in the French Press, wait four minutes, and plunge it. I use oat milk creamer (because my husband just got a job with Oatly and they sent us a whole bunch of oat milk creamer and it’s amazing) and a little bit of sugar. 

And then if I want something hot in the afternoon I’ll drink tea. I drink it the way my Irish Grandma did, cream and sugar. If I want something cold I’ll drink iced tea, unsweetened. I consume quite a bit of caffeine.

SEAN

I’ve recently switched to tea in the afternoon. I read some article about how coffee stays in your system for twelve hours or something like that. So I drink two cups of coffee in the morning and then tea in the afternoon.

SHAUN

Neither. I try to drink a lot of water.

ALISA

Coffee. Every morning. I switch between French Vanilla and Hazelnut. Hot. Always. I don’t like cold coffee. Splenda and a little bit of fat free milk.

NIK

Our espresso machine broke at home so I went to the office and took our’s home. So to answer your question, it’s coffee. Two cups in the morning and that’s it.

It’s forced me to learn how to use the machine. There’s a hose you put into the cup that’s filled with milk, you press cappuccino, it steams the milk, you press cappuccino, you press how strong it is, then it steams the milk for fourteen seconds, then you add the espresso to it—so it’s a multi-step process but it’s worth it.

I have also embraced an after dinner cup of tea. Which has been nice.

GOT A GO-TO MUG?

KAROLINA

I found it at salvation army. And it’s a very simple mug. Just white with type printed on it and it says: “I got a new wind chime, my day is getting better already.”

JACKIE

My go-to tea mug is my ESPO mug. It has a bunch of his drawings on it and makes me happy.

SEAN

I reach for the biggest one.

DANA

It’s a very large white mug with the Starbucks logo on it. I just like it cause it’s enormous so it’s like two or three cups at once I don’t have to keep getting up to refill it.

NIK

I have several. One of which is a light blue pantone cup. The other is a set of mugs that a friend gave us which is our names and bad drawings of us and third, just a plain white ceramic mug.

ALISA

I do actually. My college roommate’s Mom bought us these mugs and they have your initials on them and mine has an “A” and I’ve used it almost every day since quarantine cause it gives me a sense of familiarity.

JEREMY

My Defy Yeti—which is permanently tea colored now.

Takeaways

Rituals and routines helped this year. When everything was so all over the place, and home became work, and days blurred together—even the simplest routines helped provide some structure and much-needed mental guard rails to our days. Whether it was our methodical morning french press routine or taking the usual trip to our local coffee shop— these go-to’s kept us going.

And in a year when so much of our day-to-day has been taken away, it’s also comforting to know that Jeremy is still sitting with a stack of Oreos next to him as he designs just as he did in our office.