Regarding this entry, I may be veering off topic a tad but I would like to start off by saying that I love coffee, but unfortunately don’t know much about it since I have only worked in the industry less than a year.

That being said, I love fine dining as well. This year I will be attending school for chef training.

Correct me if I am wrong, but where I see coffee at right now is only in a cafe, a bistro and places that serve desserts to compliment the coffee being served.

What I would like to see, is for the specialty coffee industry to expand to more than just a syphon bar. I have not been able to find any place that when you walk in, says fine dining to you straight away and also serves specialty coffee. I visited my school today and their espresso machine was a Nespresso machine.

To bring this about, if coffee should be as highly regarded as wine in the culinary world, I would love to go to a fine dining establishment (maybe even a black tie restaurant) and have them offer coffee (and maybe different blends of espresso) as much as they offer any other beverage. I mean think of it, what would your reaction be a a customer if they offered you a syphon brew and then upped it a notch and performed the syphon brew process table-side?

I love food. I love coffee. Why can’t coffee establishments branch out and pair their coffee with something other than dessert? Why not rum? Or steak? Lamb?

I’m just saying that here on the western coast of Canada, we don’t get much in the way of amazingly brewed coffee in restaurants as you do in the dedicated cafe.

Is it possible?

A brilliant piece.

We do our best to create moments by telling every (most) customer about our daily espresso and that we micro-roast everything on site. Those who want to know more will ask in future visits, or when the espresso is different AND it tastes different to them, then that often starts a conversation.

There is a distinct difference between someone who wants to sit at the bar and order a siphon coffee, or just a shot of espresso and talk coffee and someone who just wants a latte to go, but I think there our opportunities to reach both at some level.

I like the phrase “Opt-In Moment” it really helps shed some light on how to provide awesome customer service by respecting someones space while noticing cues that may indicate the customers willingness to go deeper. Great post!

Jason Coffee
Coffee Cup News

One of the key components that I think you touched on is the expectation on the part of the customer. If a person has a reservation at TFL or TFD, they’re expectations are different than had they popped into their local McDonald’s. Table service, decor, attitude and presentation are all components that create a distinctive whole.

While dining at TFL, it’s perfectly “normal” to learn a bit about the dish and its ingredients. If you should desire deeper information, that is at the ready as well. The captain is more than capable of “geeking out” as much as possible concerning the dish, its ingredients, their sourcing and the techniques used to achieve that dish. In turn, the overall experience is superior – even if you’re just a casual observer and not a fanboy.

The coffee industry doesn’t offer that level of experience. We barely offer thought beyond the basic “here’s your cuppa joe.” I’ve always found the incongruence between “the best” coffeeshops proffering themselves as “something special” when they doing very little beyond the status quo. To visit TFD and engage the captain on the origins of the tenderloin is expected. To be told of the origin of the beef at McDonald’s is just odd.

At least at McDonald’s they’re dressed neatly and uniformly – how many of “the best” coffee places can claim that their baristas look at least showered? Incongruity.

We like to expend a lot of time and energy trying to convince the public that we’re something special when the visual indicators point elsewhere. We lack basic standards of appearance and environment – how possibly can we deliver something extraordinary?

Tonx complains that we have “frustratingly poor resources” at our disposal. Well, whose fault is that? It is our own. How many places have we been to where the barista is reciting from memory a description he read off a card from their roaster? The opportunity is at hand to built a great coffee place that embodies all the best aspects that we can offer. Are we leaning on “bullshit expertise and esoteric rituals” because at best we are charlatans?

To my mind, and what I’m imparting to our next generation of baristas, is that we need to develop rapport with the customer. Yes, it’s important that you possess the knowledge and technical ability of our craft, but it’s more important to develop that rapport and build trust. We want our customers to come to us because they feel comfortable leaving their experience in our hands. It’s something that we as a community have been too busy being cool and knowing it all, have missed out.

Our real problem in coffee isn’t so much that we are failing to convert all of the masses that pour through our doors, but that we still have frustratingly poor resources for the truly interested customers that would like to become connoisseurs but instead stumble into legacy mythologies and geeky, fussy rabbit hole tangents. Most consumer education remains of the smoke-and-mirrors variety, impressing consumers with our bullshit expertise and esoteric rituals, but imparting little in the way of useful information to help them make informed decisions or do peer advocacy.

Collectively, we are doing more to feed the growing backlash than we are doing to slake the curiosity of the genuinely interested.