The Best Coffee Shops Don't Necessarily Serve the Best Coffee

When we are focused on coffee quality, many coffee experts are trained to sniff, taste, and describe the best coffees. The process is part art, part science, and part language. As a final end coffee consumer, I appreciate the struggle to find the best coffees. Certainly having quality control experts, tasters, and experiments with the best way to brew can dramatically impact taste. And yet, despite this, the "best" coffeehouses don't necessarily serve the best coffee.
Rightly, today's coffee shops are trying to deliver great coffee as a result. While the quality, availability and taste of coffee year to year depends on the many variables - such as weather, climate, soil conditions, pests, political and economic conditions, and disease - we are starting to see a trend of great coffee filter throughout every region of the United States very consistently.
With delivering the best coffee, there comes a lot of training. Managers, baristas, roasters, and waiting staff all need to be trained in the coffee beans - where they are from, how they taste, how their roasted, and how their brewed can all impact their final stop on a long chain. The coffee industry, big corporate chains, and even indie cafes themselves have developed their own language that codifies this growing expertise.
The emphasis on coffee often leaves the idea of providing "excellent customer service" trailing a bit off the shoulder of the road. While many coffee shops owners will scoff at the very notion that their customer service is diminishing, many of them have slowly instituted unwritten policies of more and more coffee making training, and less and less customer service training. Perhaps because customer service is easily thought of an afterthought or simply that comes with hiring the right people. The second idea is true, much of the success a barista has depends on the barista. But consider that many cafes hire teenage baristas without much life experience and often put them in high-stress positions with unpredictable customers and situations can lead to poor customer service.
Let's look at a simple equation: Coffee shop owners often lean towards efficiency and lower costs, while customers demand more personalized service, attention to detail, care, and lower costs as well. Can we agree that there is an inherent tension in the equation?
Additionally, can it be that specialty coffee created a monster? On one end you have the image of high quality beans that gets delivered to the customer in custom fashion - each espresso, each pour over, and each adult mocha milkshake gets treated with perfection and delivered with the customer first name scrawled on the cup. Coffee companies are spending thousands every year to help their front line communicated what their coffee is supposed to taste like. Yet, profit requires the line to move quickly and the next beverage to be made without any delay.
Café owners are the only ones to blame. Ask a question about the coffee and customer behind you will roll his eyes - a way to communicate with the barista to get you out of here quickly so I can get my caffeine fix. Customer want their coffee faster and coffee shops, especially the big corporate coffee shops love to oblige. In fact, I've read that one large coffee company replaced all of their handcrafted espresso machines and replaced them to save 23 seconds per customer.
Speed and cutting a few corners with customer service appeals to café owners because it save money while simultaneously make more money. But does it lead to long term profits and sustainability?
I would argue that nine times out of ten, most customers - if given a choice - will go to the café they feel most comfortable in regardless of the coffee being offered. The quality of coffee is always second place to comfort and sense of welcome. Comfort really equals something different than usually thought of: Respect.
When you feel respected, when you feel the other person you are talking to is not talking down to you, when baristas are focused on your questions, and when they aren't looking through you, means that you are being respected and, unless you are just travelling through, you will be back.
In fact, customers will always come back to a place that respects and values their money and their presence. Customers know this: The best coffee shops are not always the ones that serve the best coffee.
If you want to increase your sales, focus on "customer experience." This can be in a number of ways: using the same language as your customers is one example. The language used by hyper-competitive coffee experts isn't the language of their customers.
There is no question that leaning towards efficiency in any business is good, but so is making your customers feel wanted and valued. Delivering that takes time, getting to know your customer, community, take investment. Balance those two items you just might be on the road to success.
Eddie Acevedo is coffee blogger at http://www.SeattleCoffeeScene.com, where he writes about coffee culture, coffeehouses, and barista life.
Are you interested in being a barista but don't know where to start? Visit http://www.BaristaTrainingAcademy.com

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