Disparaging the Third Wave, Part 3: The Cult of Baristas and Coffee Geeks
Posted by TheShot on 21 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Quality Issues
For the last installment of our three-part series on How future coffee “Waves” will come to disparage the so-called Third, we wrap up by examining two major social fads that have come to identify the Third Wave:
- The focus on baristas
- The role of coffee geeks
We’ll also touch on why, if quality coffee is to progress, we must get beyond through these and the qualitative fads of the times. For good coffee to continue proliferate in convenience, access, and quality, these qualities require a healthy, growing consumer market to support them. So the question is: are these fads helping or hurting those aims?
The Cult of the Barista
One of the hallmarks of these coffee times (call them Third Wave if you like) is that the barista has been promoted as the focal point and pinnacle of all things quality coffee. It’s as if we now expect our barista to be picking beans at origin. This despite the fact that many coffee preparations have no need for a barista.
If we promote the barista as not only the public face of coffee but its only face, we end up with representation by many of the least experienced, most novice members in the industry. Meanwhile, many in the industry still believe that barista competitions — themselves a decidedly Third Wave construct — are just as worthy as many cooking programs when it comes to TV-ready entertainment such as “Iron Chef” or “Top Chef.”
It only takes 20 minutes of sitting through an online video feed from the USBC to convince the layman consumer otherwise. Not only that, instead of promoting executive chefs at the height of their profession, barista competitions are more akin to Top Chef de Partie (or “Top Line Cook”): highly skilled and trained individuals at specific, technical tasks, but much less so the conductors of a great, comprehensive coffee offering.
Another reason that our barista competitions are more like drills for line cooks concerns the intense technical precision and narrow focus of these competitions. Specialty drinks add an element of creativity, but they are completely irrelevant to what a retail customer can purchase in a café. Then at the other extreme you have latte art competitions where the results are little more than eye candy: no more the hallmark of a technically gifted barista than a plating contest would be for a competitive chef.
What is a great barista?
Is that to suggest that the barista should be humbled more as a mere entry-level, high turnover position for the coffee industry? Anything but. Great baristas can make or break a café and often for reasons other than the amount of grinds left in their doser — i.e., abilities and skills that just don’t rank on the current barista competition scoresheets.
Earlier this week, I had dinner with New York-based Nicolas O’Connell, an owner and Managing Partner at La Colombe Torrefaction who earned his rank starting as a barista in one of their cafés. While talking about favorite coffee places in New York City, Nicolas was quick to cite Jamie McCormick of Abraço as NYC’s best barista. (Jamie is an alum of SF’s Blue Bottle Coffee.)
Nicolas waxed poetic about Jamie’s ability to connect with people in line, to engage with his customers by name and learn/know what they want — avoiding the you’re-a-waste-of-my-time attitude common among the staff at many NYC competitors. Nicolas even went so far as to say, “People love Abraço and think its a great place just because of the coffee. But the real reason they are great is Jamie, and most of the customers don’t realize that.”
You won’t find Jamie in a barista competition. Nor will you find many of the skills he excels at valued in the structure of a competition. And yet he is as critical as anyone in New York City at introducing people to better coffee standards.
Coffee Geek, R.I.P.
We save perhaps one of more controversial points for last: the coffee geek ethos needs to go. (Apologies to Mark Prince of CoffeeGeek.com.) We not only mean it for the amateur enthusiasts, but also among the professionals.
You can argue that coffee geeks have existed throughout previous waves, from home espresso enthusiasts to their übergeek home roaster brethren. As for the professional trade, yours truly still sports a goatee he grew as a joke while taking a summer grad school class at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1995 — the old joke being that all Seattle residents must be flannel-wearing, Nirvana-moshing Starbucks employees. But the explosion of these social archetypes came after the 1990s, and in part they have come to define the Third Wave.
So why is losing the coffee geek ethos critical? Because we believe it will improve access to better coffee for everyone. The longer that high quality coffee remains the exclusive domain of coffee geeks, hipsters, and “uniformed” coffee professionals, the longer that mainstream accessibility and acceptance will be an uphill battle. We joke about coffee’s tiresome wine analogy, but the wine industry successfully figured out how to bring mainstream wine out of the Gallo era in part by circumventing the image of the elitist, self-absorbed wine snob.
Some believe the Third Wave can build a supporting market for better coffee through an intense public education campaign. But too often, we’ve made it harder for consumers to relax and just enjoy a simple cup of coffee — without feeling the pressure to make a lot more decisions nor feeling burdened by educational materials and processes. And instead of tearing down walls to get more people asking for better coffee, we’ve instead built up a few walls.
If they’re not with you, they’re against you
While it’s hard for readers here to fathom the idea of Starbucks being elitist, nearly every online post that mentions Starbucks attracts a heavy level of venomous contempt for the company and its patrons. (Google it — we dare you.) This contempt seems to originate from staunch defenders of the mainstream and the “prudent” — people who take great offense that their cheaper, mainstream tastes are no longer “good enough.” Now just imagine the shock-and-awe bursting of aneurysms if these same people encountered an army of coffee geeks that look down their noses at Starbucks and its patrons?
We don’t envision a Tocqueville-like an end to stratification. And there may always be people so insecure as to feel threatened by another person’s beverage choice — as if it were a personal judgment of their self-worth — where only professional therapists stand to have any hope of changing them. But there are also many coffee geeks, amateurs and professionals alike, who would prefer to keep quality coffee as “this thing of ours.” If for no other reason than irrational fear that the mainstream popularization of quality coffee would devalue their own identities and/or constitute a commercial sell-out.
Every advancement “Third Wave” coffee has brought to bear — from the varieties of single-origin beans to roast-dated coffee to public cuppings to barista competitions — would not have been possible if not for the development of an economic market to support them. But more mainstream coffee consumers — the ones who will help build sustainable economic markets for even better coffee — will not get over their apprehension of delving deeper into coffee as long as its image is that of the self-celebrated coffee geek or judgmental coffee snob. Even the very word “geek” defies social acceptance.
If quality coffee remains trapped in its insulated niche, standards across the board will be stuck. And even we coffee geeks will eventually be stifled by Third Wave coffee’s conformity of non-conformity.
Links to other parts of the series:
10 Comments »
on 23 Mar 2009 at 1:56 am +00:00T 1.Ed C. said …
How did you get through 20 minutes of barista competition video? That these people think that these competitions are in any way exciting to outsiders is the strongest possible statement as to just how out of touch with reality they are. What matters is what winds up in the cup–nothing else. I applaud those who can consistently pull killer shots of espresso; whether their techniques measure favorably against some mythical standard is wholly irrelevant.
on 24 Mar 2009 at 9:09 pm +00:00T 2.Anonymous said …
I work in the coffee business, as both a roaster and a barista. I agree with everything you’ve said in this series. Thank you.
on 25 Mar 2009 at 7:01 am +00:00T 3.Chris said …
I came upon your series while geeking out on coffee, worrying about how my recent Kenya SO will taste as an espresso, and if I’ll be able to pour the rosetta I’ve been working on.
I was a little self-conscious at first, trying to figure out what you knew that I didn’t. But, then I stopped worrying about what you or Nick, or anyone else thought long enough to ask myself what I thought.
Which is: I don’t care if the recent growth in specialty coffee is a wave or not. I’m not a hipster, and felt old when standing next to many of them at the USBC, which I attended as an interested consumer. Some in-wave folks don’t know sh*t about coffee, but feel cool around it, others don’t look cool, but possess knowledge and expertise that moves the industry forward, and some have got it all. It doesn’t matter to me.
I wanted to find interesting coffee, and I wanted the coffee industry to improve the lives of farmers. A lot of what is going on right now in the industry does this. What doesn’t might not last, as you say, and shouldn’t.
I don’t know enough to know if you’re right about the wave concept or not, but in trying to disprove it, you seem to have taken the shotgun approach, blowing bits of coffee culture up without discretion. I tend to like my arguments a little more articulate and precise.
There is more gray area than you let on.
on 25 Mar 2009 at 7:39 am +00:00T 4.Rob said …
Just read your “3 piece” series.
You really like those big punchline analogies and turns of phrase. I do too except when the writing exists almost singularly as the setup for them. I challenge you to re-write even a section of this and make it 5 to 10 thousand words. That would be a lot of space to fill between the jokes and the cleverness.
Clever Boys just grow up to be annoying adults. Maybe you can buck that trend and give us something substantive next time?
Oh dear — now I’m the clever one… bla bla bla…..and just when I thought the Internet couldn’t fit one more wanker in the door, I go and squeeze myself in. sigh.
on 25 Mar 2009 at 6:22 pm +00:00T 5.Chris said …
An enjoyable take, Shot.
I see some of it a different way. For instance, I’ve “geeked” out on coffee because it was a blast learning and making good espresso, discovering Chemex, French press, etc. And it became a hobby. That what happens with hobbies … you start going OCD to do it the best you can. My fear is that the enthusiasm spills over in conversation, where I might be building coffee up to be some sort of mystical, impenetrable secret that only I am allowed to know.
The best part of the series: learning of Abraco, and the barista who seems to eschew latte art shows in favor of engaging the customer. Gotta love that.
on 15 Dec 2009 at 2:32 pm +00:00T 6.Yerbouti Issasheikin said …
Barista competitions are a little scary. I want to know, do the people who participate buy trophy cases?
Making whoever drinks your coffee, that is your customers, happy is really special. Seeing how you compare to other baristas in an international competition is like caring about a penis size survey.
on 12 Jan 2010 at 12:13 pm +00:00T 7.John G. said …
I can’t say that I completely agree, nor do I completely disagree. It wont dispute someones opinion. Personally, the industry is many things to many people. Folgers drinkers or aficionados of the worlds best, have a place in the industry. At times I think the industry is becoming a playground for elitists (snobs/geeks if you will). But I’m sure my place in coffee upsets someone out there. I guess what I’m trying to say is the articles look to change a whole industry that is still greatly based on opinion and taste. I will always drink coffee and always pursue great coffee, regardless of “waves.” For me what it all boils down to are not the actions of an industry, but the actions of individuals. It’s about ritual, experience, friends, family, memories and sharing a good time. That’s what it is to me. And I hope not everyone shares that opinion.
on 12 Jan 2010 at 12:16 pm +00:00T 8.John G. said …
I can’t say that I completely agree, nor do I completely disagree. It wont dispute someones opinion. Personally, the industry is many things to many people. Folgers drinkers or aficionados of the worlds best, have a place in the industry. At times I think the industry is becoming a playground for elitists(snobs/geeks if you will). But I’m sure my place in coffee upsets someone out there. What I’m trying to say is you can’t look to change a whole industry that is still greatly based on opinions & taste. I will always drink coffee & always pursue great coffee, regardless of “waves.” For me what it all boils down to is not the industry, but the of individuals. It’s about ritual, experience, friends, family, memories and sharing something. That’s what it is to me. And not everyone sees it that way and I’m glad for that.
on 23 Jan 2010 at 9:19 am +00:00T 9.anon said …
If they’re not with you, they’re against you.
This is the ethos of a handful of marketing driven, corporate roasters who have climbed to prominenece in the so called 3rd Wave. Thier publicists have worked hard to make sure any up and comer that isn’t in the clique will feel inadequate. All disquise themselves as quality and sustainability driven, “indie” rebels, when the reality is they are marketing driven “lifestyle brands” that through thier actions & marketing constantly undermine sustainability in the drive for bigger profits. Front of house is run by self obsessed novices who believe that only THEY & THEIR ALLIES have the magical ability to do it right, Anyone that thinks differnet, even thier own customers, is disparaged. Having seen it all after 25 years in this business, we are appalled by the way our younger, hipper competitors build market share by attacking thier own customers and by the self congratulatory, schoolyard culture of the so called 3rd wave. Super Douche Nick Cho exemplifies this generation of coffee brands: nasty, niave, narcissistic and not here for long. Just because you and your publicist SAY it’s the best coffee ever doesn’t mean it is, people can taste the difference and more important, will choose coffee shops and service providers (that what a Barista is guys, a SERVICE PROVIDER)that make them feel valued. We miss the old days when all these little dick heads worked in the music business, not coffee bars.
It IS fun watching them all climb over each other and back stab each other as they spend themselves into bankruptcy, I must say.
on 03 Apr 2010 at 6:36 pm +00:00T 10.Coffeestork said …
I posted something today about my visit to Sam James Coffee Bar , which made me remember this post you did about the cult of the barista. Your description about the how the barista needs to connect with the customer definitley resonated with me at that time, and my visit reminded me that there are places where this happens, although I wish there were more.