Posted by TheShot on 05 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Barista, Starbucks
Today’s Chicago Daily Herald published a sort of barista confessional by Kerry Lester, detailing some of the professional oddities and insights of working in a Chicago Starbucks: Daily Herald | A former barista spills the beans. Whether it’s continually smelling of coffee, getting hit on by customers, learning how to live in a regularly over-caffeinated [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 04 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew
Unable to keep pace with the cancerous growth of Starbucks Coffee, Caribou Coffee, the nation’s #2 coffee specialty chain, seems to have opted for better customer experience as a competitive advantage, according to today’s The Detroit News: Caribou Coffee aims to be No. 1 in experience. (This is consistent with their point-of-sale kiosks announcement we [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 09 May 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society
Yesterday’s Greensboro, NC’s Yes! Weekly published a humorous article on the ten most common customer archetypes at any given coffee shop: Ten Best: Coffee shop archetypes. (Updated for the broken link in 2011.) Though for SF, they’re missing the Prius-driving Fair Trade zombie child archetype.
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Fair Trade
Some of you may recall just how much the zombie children of the Fair Trade cult scare the bejeezus outta me. Ritual Coffee Roasters barista, Gabriel Boscana, wrote a much more tactful and civil approach to these single-issue customers in this month’s issue of Barista Magazine: FebMarch 07 – Certified Coffee Pusher. It was oddly [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 24 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society, Local Brew, Quality Issues
Today The Oregonian published an interview with David Rittenhouse, who over the past summer started the Portland Oregon Espresso Tasting Society (or P.O.E.T.S.): Opinions flow. And you guessed it, his top tip for people ordering espresso…?: If someone pours you a bad shot, don’t be afraid to ask for another one. Everyone has a flat [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 29 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Quality Issues
One of coffee’s big stories of the past year has been the seemingly sudden discovery and public awareness of Fair Trade coffee. Twenty years after the founding of Equal Exchange, Fair Trade coffee awareness reached critical mass this year in the U.S., the U.K., and many other nations around the world. This awareness began with [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Starbucks
Leave it to the Australians to best capture the state of Big Coffee in America, as reported today on Melbourne’s The Age: There’s a war brewing, but taste is still the loser on America’s coffee front. The article points out America’s escalating obsession with quality coffee, but (IMO, correctly) notes how poor the baseline coffee [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 07 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Home Brew
Last year while looking to upgrade my home stereo from a Michael J. Fox-era boom box, I made the mistake of stopping into a Bose store. There I rudely discovered that Bose does not sell home stereos. No, they sell lifestyles. Problem was that I was already quite happy with my pre-owned lifestyle; I just [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 27 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends
There are few things that illustrate the great divide between the old, traditional way of looking at coffee and something of a more recent way than reactions to the price of coffee. (Neither way of which is more or less correct than the other, mind you.) On the one hand, we have the new psychology [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 07 Sep 2006 | Tagged as: Barista
Ignore the poor formatting for a moment, but a barista near CSU Fullerton shares her tips, protocols, and basic manners when ordering your double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato: Barista Gives Tips On Getting Drink Orders Right – Opinion.
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