It's 9:30 a.m. on a Friday, and a short line of cars has formed in the drive-thru of Java Divas coffee shop.
Inside the small gray shed, barista Lauren Lucabaugh serves a frappuccino with a smile — and little else. The brown-haired, blue-eyed Lucabaugh sports a skimpy purple and black bikini, which her customer, Justin Hartman, glances at before thanking her for the cold coffee drink and driving off.
"I've never seen anything like this," said Hartman, a 23-year-old who lives in Pasadena. "It's better than going to Starbucks."
Java Divas, which opened last November next to a gas station in Pasadena, is Maryland's first drive-thru "costume coffee shop", according to owner Brandy McMillion. She likes to call it "Hooters meets Starbucks." Depending on the day, the four part-time employees – all young women — could be in school girl outfits, military uniforms or lingerie. Though it's only been open less than a year, Java Divas already has a loyal customer base, with plenty of return customers, McMillion said.
"The local residents took to us," she said. "We usually have two or three people lined up, waiting for us to open."
Java Divas may be the first sultry coffee shop in the state, but it's not the first in the country. Cowgirls Espresso, a similar concept, has locations in Texas, California and Washington state. A full-time critical care nurse, McMillion borrowed the idea from a special she saw on the Travel Channel about one of the other shops, and decided to open one here after her husband, Bill, was laid off from his job in March of 2009.
"We joked about the one we saw on TV, and one joke led to another, and that led to reality," she said. "Whatever you can get at Starbucks, we can make it better."
Bill built the 16x18 feet shack and leased the ground from the gas station. It's been a symbiotic relationship – business at the gas station has gone up by as much as 30 percent since Java Divas opened, according to the gas station's owner, Munawar Abbasi. He gets coffee there every day — sometimes as much as two or three times a day.
"This used to look like a dead gas station," Abbasi said. "People see lines now, they know something is going on."
The week after Java Divas opened, McMillion and a couple of her employees stood out in front of the shack wearing bikinis and holding signs. They decided to stop after distracted commuters got into three accidents on Ritchie Highway in less than two hours, she said.
"It started off with a bang," McMillion said.
Each day has its own theme at Java Divas. There's military uniform Mondays, fantasy Tuesdays, western Wednesday, back to school Thursdays, sports spirit Fridays and bikini Saturdays. With an open-ended theme, Tuesdays tend to be the most popular.
Men make up more than 75 percent of Java Divas' customer base, McMillion said. Marriage proposals and flirtatious behavior aren't uncommon, according to employee Lindsay Krebs, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Maryland College Park. Once, a guy brought her a poem he'd written.
"He told me I had been his muse," she said. "It was absolutely beautiful."
McMillion has never had to send any of the girls home for wearing outfits that are too risque, she said. None of the employees felt objectified by the job, either.
"We're like a sisterhood," Krebs said.
Yet not all of the reaction to Java Divas has been positive. When Jen Kenny, a nanny who lives in Severna Park, heard about the shop's various theme days, she thought it was a bit much.
"Times are changing, but around here ... that's pushing it," Kenny said. "If they wore cute outfits — but school girl stuff? It's strip-clubbish."
But it's not just about the costumes, McMillion says. Java Diva prides itself on its coffee. The beans come from the Annapolis roaster Caffe Pronto, and the juice for the smoothies has no artificial additives. Coffee is served in B-, C- and D-sized cups, which come with a red lips sticker. Since coffee sales slump in the warmer months, they've started selling snowballs to make up for the difference.
"We've had customers say, the girls are great, the coffee's better," she said.
One diva is on duty at a time, and the business is open every day but Sunday. There isn't room for more than a couple people to comfortably work inside the small building, with its gray siding and shingled roof. A boom box plays dance tunes, and a poster of a pinup model on the wall reads "It doesn't get any better than this."
Originally, the McMillions were hoping to break even in 16 months, Bill said. Now, it looks like they might do it in 10. She wants to open more Java Divas spots in Anne Arundel County in the coming months, and is eyeing Fort Meade as a possible expansion.
"It's only a costume coffee shop," she said. "It's light-hearted. They're local college girls having fun."
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