Sticks & Stones

A term that I always want a better, or at least more concise word for when I write a post, or indeed am talking about coffee, is the term by which we refer to the segment of the coffee industry which is wholly quality focused and eternally striving to improve coffee as a whole.

‘Speciality coffee‘ is the typical goto phrase which is far too general and the spectrum which it could technically cover would include a large spread of poor coffee with good marketing. A food connoisseur may be considered to be interested in speciality food but that would be far too wide a gamut for a concise explanation as to what they enjoy or expect when they go to a restaurant.

I suppose the partial reason for why we always default to “speciality coffee” is to a degree at least people know what you are talking about and it’s an approachable term in that it is harder to impune much snobbery as opposed to a word like ‘connoisseur’, and to an outsider it probably seems quite accurate.

A further problem with ‘speciality’ coffee is that it has been adopted by the larger companies, whose doses and standards do not come close to meeting what I consider to be true speciality coffee.

But what are the alternatives? A few get kicked around but they don’t cut the mustard in my mind.

‘Third Wave‘ is a popular term but the pay off of it is that it doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense to an outsider.

‘Connoisseur‘ is typically construed as snobby and unapproachable, which is the exact opposite.

The best term I can think is passionate, but using the term ‘passionate coffee’ doesn’t make much sense, perhaps there’s a synonym that can be better used, but a passionate barista is at the heart of what the focus is about.

It could be said that this is merely semantics, but I think there is a larger problem in the barriers of communication that are faced by baristas when trying to connect with the clientelle is how we refer to the segment of the industry we mean in a concise way.  Speaking to the average person saying 3rd wave will lead to very little understanding which starts making the whole conversation start to become arcane and confusing to the uninitiated which, in turn can risk creating the negative view of snobbery and alienating the very peole we’re trying to reach.

Does anyone have a better term?

From the other side of the bar…

I’ve been thinking recently about how a barista may be perceived from the other side of the bar.  The role of a barista is unique in a few ways.  Unlike a bar-tender, they actually have an influence in the final product beyond presentation.  I would say it is fairer to consider a barista to be more akin to a chef than to that of a bar-tender or cashier.

I feel the perception, at least from the general public’s view-point, is that a barista is a customer service role that involves pressing a couple of extra buttons and pouring milk, so when a barista offers something different from that which the customer requests (for example, an aeropress of an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe as opposed to an Americano) there is an automatic assumption that they’re ‘upselling’ or trying to offer something with a better margin or whatever, and automatically say “No” to the offer.

This hypothesis can be backed up by the amount of people who say “No” automatically if you offer them sugar and then ask for sugar in the next beat. I’m pretty sure I could double my tips by asking if people want their change at the end of a transaction.

Is there any way to change this perception of a barista as a till operator?

I hate to point fingers but it does seem to stem from the brands, and I say this with intimate knowledge of how a brand operates and encourages it’s staff to get the highest spend per head, the onslaught of optional extras starts to sound like you’re buying a car rather than a cappuccino.

Extra syrup, crisps, biscuits, muffin, scone, cream, alloy wheels, CD changers, Parking Sensors, DVD player, extra shot  etc. with your latte today?

When a customer trusts a barista to guide them to a better experience then they may let you crack out the vac-pot but a lot of them just want what they ask for.

Which leads to a bit of traditional wisdom within retail that this breaks.  “Give the customer what they want.”  Rather than that doing this gives them something they’re likely to appreciate more but certainly not something they originally wanted.  Of course the downside to this is there are some people who will be swayed and not enjoy it, simply due to their palette not suiting the coffee or an expectation of something different (ever pick up water thinking it’s lemonade?). Then what happens? Is the trust broken? I suppose it depends on the customer.  Some will be too embarrassed to say they don’t like something if it’s served to them by someone who seems to have an authoritative knowledge and may never take that risk again.  I make a point to enquire to anyone whom I encourage to try a speciality coffee as to how they found the coffee.  And, what I believe to be important is to take on board what they tell me.  It’s very easy to discount someone not liking a coffee that you find to be particularly special as ‘not getting’ and simply ignore their critique.

A tweet from Will Corby questioned:

Would anyone say a barista tasting an espresso during trading hours, behind an espresso machine “looked unproffesional”?

To this there seems to be an industry-standard response that if anything, not tasting an espresso during trading hours would be unprofessional, this again highlights the difference between the branded shops and independent specialist shops. At the brands this can be seen as gross-misconduct and result in dismissal.  During my time at working at a branded coffee chain I had a few incidents of other managers saying that they would “have words” with me if I were on their shifts drinking a shot at the bar.  This may seem to be of little importance but I would say it is vastly important that a barista not only knows their shot is good (not simply based on pulling a shot in a certain amount of time, but the less measurable but far more important aspect of the taste) but allows the barista to speak with absolutely certainty and authority to the qualities of the coffee they’re serving.  Despite regular unofficial chastisement I would regularly taste a shot of espresso every few hours to ensure everything was working correctly.

Perhaps all this is down to interaction.  If you talk to someone who is passionate about what they do then it shows.  I gesticulate like I’m having a freaking seizure, my language and inclinations change and I think it shows I’m really nuts about what I do. I’m sure others do so in different ways but at any rate, when a customers see’s you’re passionate about what you do then, perhaps, their view of you changes.

For some people, they will never look at their barista in a different light than they will look at a checkout operator. But there is a segment of the public that love to engage with people who are passionate at what they do, and hopefully that segment will become the dominant one.  The only problem is not alienating people when they try to make that connection…but that’s for another post.

Starbucks and their effects…

This is based on a reply on a Barista facebook group complaining of baristi from Starbucks joining in…

Apologies for the slightly disjointed nature of this blessay it wasn’t originally meant to be as large as it is, but I had to vent my spleen as it were when i got started

Going back to the Starbuck’s Baristi though I agree to a point, I think Starbucks have done good in their time, in bringing espresso coffee into the main stream, and until about 5 years ago they still made drinks in group machines rather than bean to cup. And if you ask nicely you can get a true macchiato from them. I’m really hoping their new direction will get them back to leading the public to expect better coffee because at the end of the day thats better for all of us.

Their baristi are a product of their company, I would imagine its a lot easier to get a job in Starbucks when you leave school than it is to get a job in an independent coffee shop, where a member of staff’s training cost is a lot higher in relation to income, as is often the trust that must be placed in the individual. They tell their staff “this is a macchiato” and they try and set themselves up as the all knowing font for coffee expertise, and if their baristi are browsing groups like this and are seeing there are different ways of doing things and their passion for coffee could be directed better (Its hopeful but I’m sure there must be some passionate and potentially brilliant baristi within their ranks) then they might say to themselves “Well if I can’t do better coffee here then i might try somewhere else and see what I can do”.

But they need to change a few things in my view, to really make the best of their position, instead of having the “Espresso Blend” they could improve their quality and educate by having a rotating blend, seasonal espresso dependant on which regions are shipping out coffee at that time and dropping their “100% Arabica”. This is going to be a bit contentious, but in my view  in a 21oz latte you need robusta. Rather than a 10% Fairtrade mix which they currently have, paying a fair price for good quality robusta would help farmers a hell of a lot more.

Also they need to stop acting like independents are the enemy and be embracing of them, they alienate the coffee community by doing this and I would be more willing to part with money.

I would also love for them to go back to using grouped machines and having trained and talented baristi rather than having stores that could be staffed by 2 monkeys.

The last thing which they can do to improve it is to close some stores. I know it sounds backwards, but if there is a starbucks for every McDonalds then they get associated in the same way and when you can get a coffee from McDs for 1/2 the price then its a no brainer.

At the end of the day, the huge majority of the general public will associate lattes and cappuccinos with Starbucks and to ignore this is bad for the industry as a whole, they’re the face of coffee and changing that is nigh-on impossible.

Though I would love it if with every person on the street mentioning a cappuccino brought memories of 6floz thick walled cups of silky coffee, at the moment its a 16floz paper cup with a latte topped with froth/foam and then drenched in chocolate powder and filled with as much sugar as can saturate the milk and changing that is a slow burn, but it is slowly happening.

If Starbucks and their contempories were to go bust tomorrow, 3rd wave coffee shops would not get any bigger, the crowds would just move to McDonalds, and Krisy Kreme and any number of other food service outlets that have capitolised on “Premium Coffee”.  Or maybe I don’t have enough faith in the general public…

Thats just my two cents of course