It was half-past nine in the morning, and I was ready to drag in a cot. One of those canvas-bodied jobs braced by aluminum tubing. The kind that my kindergarten teacher directed us toward when it was nap time. The kind that an enterprising 40-something-year-old might claim if he found himself somewhere pleasant, somewhere he didn’t want to leave.

Not that I was sleepy. Nope, I was all juiced up on coffee and sugar.

Specifically, I had just finished breakfast at 3 Cups, a Chapel Hill, North Carolina, retailer-cum-cafe. One that works hard at converting its clientele to the gospel of single-source and oftentimes unheralded coffees, chocolates, teas, and wines.

At half-past nine on that Thursday morning, I was nothing if not a convert. A convert all geeked up on coffee and sugar and contentment.

Just so you know: The name of the place, 3 Cups, is almost literal. Included in the original purview was the troika of coffee, tea, and chocolate. But not wine.

Wine came later when founder Lex Alexander — a member of the Whole Foods Market executive team back in the 1990s when they were growing that brand into a powerhouse — realized that stimulants require the counterbalance of depressants. (That’s a joke; the truth is Lex realized that downtown Chapel Hill lacked a good wine store.)

So, with the wine, make that four cups. No matter. As I was saying, I had just finished breakfast.

The coffee was Ethiopian, from the village of Biloya, on the outskirts of Yirgacheffe. (You know where that is, right?) According to the folks at 3 Cups, it’s in southwestern Ethiopia, near Misty Valley, where, in the surrounding forests, coffee evolved into the fruit we know today.

(Aside: Yes, coffee is a fruit; it’s even seasonal. For a remedial on coffee, get thee to Chapel Hill and ask serious-minded questions of the staffers behind the counter at 3 Cups. Alternately, you might pick up a copy of Corby Kummer’s The Joy of Coffee: The Essential Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying.)

The sun-dried Biloya beans smelled somehow citrusy, somehow gingery. They arrived, ground to order, in a French press pot with an hourglass timer. (Like a growing number of countercultural coffee spots, 3 Cups prefers press pots and vacuum pots.)

The coffee, at last, was served. It was chocolatey on the finish, with a spine of acidity that made my mouth water for the slab of blood orange cake that came alongside, that cake being the product of April McGreger, a supremely talented young baker who began her career as the pastry chef at Lantern. At this Chapel Hill temple of local foodshed cookery, owner Andrea Reusing focuses Carolina goods through the prism of neo-Asian cookery.

Back to that slab of blood orange cake. There’s no other way to describe the generosity of the cut. It was a slab. And it was insanely moist. As if, just before serving said slab, the 3 Cups counterman had squeezed a whole orange over it. (That’s not how it was done, though, I asked. To learn how and ogle a recipe, which will get you an approximation of the goodness that was that slab, go to blood orange cake.)

The blood orange cake wasn’t the only sweet thing on offer. There were croissants. And scones. And all manner of baked goods you know and love. All arranged on lovely pedestals. And they were fine. Just fine.

But they were not baked by April, who calls her bootstrap enterprise Farmer’s Daughter in homage to her daddy, who tills dirt and digs sweet potatoes down in Calhoun County, Mississippi. (He’s also the inspiration for her sweet potato and cherry butter, sold by the half-pint from a wall rack near the 3 Cups register.)

If you follow my lead — if you make 3 Cups a site of morning pilgrimage where, in addition to a keen cup of coffee, you can score a plantation-specific bar of Ecuadoran chocolate, a tin of extra fancy Formosa oolong tea, and a great $12 bottle of Languedoc red — please keep in mind that I can’t promise that the blood orange cake will be on offer.

But I can tell you that April roasts her own granola. And that it’s chockablock with roasted almonds, shreds of apricot, and something that tastes like coriander seed. All of which is to say it’s great. Really great. Especially when the 3 Cups counterman douses it with milk poured from a glass jug and sourced from Maple View Creamery, just down the road.

And then there’s her pecan and anise biscotti. And her molasses gingerbread.

Like I said, it was half-past nine. And I had just finished breakfast.

It wasn’t like I was still hungry. Or that I was sleepy.

It’s just that I was happy where I was. And I didn’t want to leave. And if I had only had a cot, I could have reclined, right then and there, and awaited the next opportunity to drink and eat.