Category: Retail

Working Remotely and Tangible Craft

Before I started working at Automattic (the folks behind WordPress.com and the Jetpack WordPress platform), I had a career in what I call progressive coffee: high end coffee, well made, ethically sourced, that kind of thing.

(I’ve written a little about my journey from a hospitality job to a job with a tech company here and here, if you’re curious about that)

While I was working at Seven Stars Bakery in Providence, Rhode Island, our biggest day of the week was Saturday, especially Saturday morning. One part of my job there was designing the layout of the employee space, as well as building and improving the training programs. Spending my Saturday mornings at the busiest location on the busiest day was a great way to ensure that my work was successful, and was adding value to the company and customers when the rubber hit the road.

During one of these shifts, I’d typically clock in 14,000+ steps: it is borderline insane to think about, now, when I struggle to get in 10,000 steps in a whole day!

Preparing really excellent espresso, tasting coffee to decide what to bring on as an offering: these are inherently and importantly physical and sensorial activities: awareness of the body and what it’s telling you is part and parcel of finding success in these pursuits. You have to not just heat the milk, you have to listen, to watch it, to gauge the temperature of the pitcher against your hand. You spend a lot of time focused on and attending to your sense inputs, using your body and its inputs in increasingly focused and demanding ways.

The combination of focused precise work (which being a quality-focused barista in a busy espresso bar absolutely is) with 14,000 steps meant that the days were cognitively and physically exhausting.

Moving away from this career into what I do now, working for a software company, and more specifically working fully remotely, was a real shift. It was a real change, in some ways I expected (I didn’t have to work on Saturdays anymore!) and in some ways I did not expect.

One of the unexpected changes was that I found I was attracted to hobbies that were much more manual: gardening at first, and more recently woodworking.

Over time I’ve come to realize that the part of me that is fulfilled by building things and planting vegetables is the same part of me that was fulfilled by those busy Saturdays: there’s a value to using the body, to getting to know what your body can do and how many amazing things you can teach it to accomplish.

Part of it, too, is that manual pursuits, physical crafts, impose humility on the practitioner: you cannot Google how to cut a perfect dovetail.

Well, that’s not true – you can Google it, and get lots of results! But, you can’t Google how to actually do it, like Neo in the Matrix. Once the saw hits the lumber, the truth comes out. There is no quick route: if you want to make beautiful things out of wood, you have to spend a lot of time making pretty ugly stuff first.

You simply have to put the miles on: there aren’t any shortcuts.

(This is also true for another new pursuit of mine – Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but you’d have to substitute “make ugly stuff” to “get choked out by strangers” – different but the same!)

Like everything, becoming someone who works with code means re-learning everything I’ve known to be true again, in a new pursuit. I realized and came to appreciate the need for exposure, for time with my saws and chisels and on the mats – and at the outset it seemed so different from writing code. Coding, for the beginner, many times does feel like there are short cuts, with Stack Exchange, with other folks’ code or libraries, etc.

It turns out that what all those folks on Stack Exchange have been saying all this time (but are mostly ignored) is true: copy-pasting a solution that works is different from understanding the problem, from getting a deep sense of the solution and how to pursue it. It’s like buying someone else’s chest of drawers rather than building it yourself. It’s different from having the answer in your bones.

The more I learn, the more I learn that everything is the same. For me, I’ve learned that remote work is an amazing way to work, and writing software and doing data work is special, and important, and so satisfying: but the brain and the body, or my brain and body at least, really need that opportunity to do work in the physical space, to hold something, to engage in craft that doesn’t happen on my laptop screen.

If you are a remote worker, and you don’t have a hobby or pursuit that takes you off of your computer and into the garage or the gym – you should give it a try!

You Don’t Get Any Points For The Biscuit

During the panel discussion at MANE about barista competitors and competitions, one of the panelists recalled a moment when, as a judge, he watched a competitor slip over the 15 minute mark as she struggled to perfectly place tiny sweet biscuits on the saucers of her signature beverages – “You don’t get any points for the biscuit,” he sighed.

As we find ourselves in the midst of competition season, let’s remind ourselves: you win a contest by getting the most points. There are customs that we adhere to in an almost ritualistic, superstitious way (tablecloths!), and there are items that dominate the scoresheet – those x4 multipliers that every competition prep session focuses on. To become a barista champion, you must know the rules inside and out, and know what gets you points – and what doesn’t.

This sentiment can be writ large across not just our competition structure, but also in the way that we operate our businesses. When we are able to step back from working in our business and start to work on our business, it becomes time to figure out what points to pursue. In some sense, the competitors at the regional and national barista competitions are lucky: they have a book of rules explaining how and where points can be gained. For us, in the game of coffee shop management or wholesale coffee sales, we are in the enviable position of deciding our own point structure.

While it is certainly true that revenue can be used as a scoring system, I’m assuming that you, like me, consider it only one part of a larger vision. After all, if our primary way of finding satisfaction in life were through our P&L, progressive coffee would not be the best pursuit.

If money-in alone does not define success for you and your business, what then does? It is easy to reject cashflow alone as your definition of victory, but it is much less easy to define what exactly does constitute success. This is the rub: you can only win if you define how to win, and since this pursuit is yours, it is up to you to define victory. Once you decide what your victory conditions are – pursue them.

One thing we tend to do, especially those of us who are only just coming up in the progressive coffee movement, is to confuse the newest and the coolest with the best. If my generation of coffee professionals doesn’t set down anchor and determine its true goals – even as individuals – then we’ll be forever at the mercy of the winds of fashion. If your success is defined by staying at the crest of the fashion wave, then perhaps this won’t be so concerning to you, and indeed many businesses survive doing just that. What will put deposits in your success fund? Is it taste? Is it approval? Is it increased revenue?

The first step is deciding what is important, and what is just a biscuit.

Innovating Context: Whole Bean Offerings

(This post is part of an ongoing series on the need to innovate the context in which we sell coffee. The first post is HERE)

Admittedly: I have never run a green coffee buying program, I have exactly zero Roasters Guild certifications, and I’ve never mastered the art of blending. This post, then, is more about ruminating, and hopefully, engaging a little conversation.


Roasters: I would like to suggest that many (not all!) progressive coffee roasters today are holding in their operating model two beliefs that cannot simultaneously be true, and are unnecessarily spending time and money trying to reconcile this impossible tension. These two beliefs are:

A: I have to carry coffee x ( where coffee x = dark roast, Sumatra, Hazelnut, any coffee you sell but wouldn’t drink. Many roasters have multiple examples of coffee x.) 
B: We have to help our customers learn about good coffee

On the face of it, these ideas don’t seem like they are at odds with one another, and I think many operations will readily admit that they subscribe to them both. We can pick them apart a little more, however. Presumably, roasters want to carry coffee x not because they are necessarily proud of coffee x, but because they can sell coffee x. After all, if you are carrying a coffee you aren’t proud of, and that coffee isn’t selling, you shouldn’t be reading this blog, you should be finding a new green broker. So let’s change idea A to:

A: I am carrying coffee x because my customers buy it

There’s nothing wrong with idea A – in fact, hopefully your customers buy all of your coffee – but I’d imagine there are coffees in your portfolio where sales alone are not the only factor – perhaps there is a compelling narrative, or a great direct trade relationship, or simply an astonishingly good cup. Idea A describes a coffee which you sell simply and solely because you know it will be purchased.


We can similarly break down idea B: it’s a complicated idea, after all – why do we want our customers to learn about good coffee? Well, probably because it tastes better, but also because it is a revenue source that is more meaningful – when you sell something you think is good, it feels good, rather than selling something because you think it will sell. So we can adjust idea B to something like:

B: I want my customers to buy good coffee, from me.

So our setup is now:

A: I am carrying coffee x because my customers buy it
B: I want my customers to buy good coffee, from me.

Remember: the definition of coffee x is a coffee you are not super excited about, but carry for its cash flow properties. I would suggest that the more examples of coffee x you have in your catalog, the farther away from achieving idea B you are. But I’m genuinely curious if this is a real tension that roasters experience: can you sell coffee you love and coffee you don’t love? How do you maintain a quality-centric brand while including your coffee x?

My suggestion would be to reject the Starbucks model of 18 blends and a few single origins, all of which are merely OK, and rather embrace a much smaller selection of SO’s and blends, all of which you’re excited about. I believe that this is possible and profitable when done well, even in small-market settings.

Innovating Context: Wireless Internet

(This post is part of an ongoing series of posts regarding how we retail progressive coffee. The first post is HERE)
Wireless Internet: an ongoing debate within our industry. The cause of countless lost Yelp stars, many a facebook argument, and certainly a broken heart or two.

For a line barista, my thinking about free wireless is parallel to my thinking about large soy caramel mocha lattes: if your shop has it, your shop has it. If you are not a decision maker in your company, the best move is to align your thinking along optimization: how can I make this experience the best one it can be? I’d say, generally, an eye-roll never positively contributes to that goal.

For folks in leadership/ownership positions: I don’t think the approach is all that different. As in many things, I think the first step is to consider your vision: what kind of experience do you want your customers to have? Once that experience is defined, you must advance toward it ruthlessly. If you strive to have a community space where people feel comfortable sitting for hours, sipping on free refills and running into their neighbors, then free wireless is probably a good fit for your vision. If you want to focus on the culinary side of things, engage your customers more like a cocktail bar or restaurant than the classic American coffee shop, then free wireless is probably not for you.

It is tempting to give in to public demand (aka “whinging”) and offer free wifi, but attempt to keep folks from camping out all day by reducing the signal strength, or periodically creating outages to roust these folks from their collective perches. This is certainly bad hospitality; offering something, then not actually following through on your offer with authentic effort and pride, is not the way to deal with the wireless problem.

I can imagine a space where free wireless could fit into the vision of excellent, progressive coffee. This is not to say that the two are incompatible; rather, wifi should not be an afterthought, or included because it is something one must do. It will certainly impact the customer base and nature of interactions in your shop, which is something you should approach intentionally, with an eye to your final vision.

Like many of these posts, we get to a point where there is a great deal of tension between our vision for our own spaces and the prevailing patterns of our communities. Much like menu construction or ordering style, if the context of your space fits the bill of a space that ought to have wireless internet, people will expect you to offer wireless internet. Whether this expectation is fair or not is, frankly, not up for debate. The fact is, if your customers arrive certain of what sort of place they are in – and you tell them they are wrong, by not having free wireless internet, or by only serving one sort of cappuccino, or by offering no blended beverages – that is not their fault. It is your fault.

I would posit that if your customers enter your space and are confused as to what sort of place they are in, this is a superior situation to them arriving, being certain of the place, and then being told that their certainty is misplaced – because it is not misplaced. We all live in the same world, and we all recognize the same patterns.

Free Wireless really gets to the heart of the Context Problem, as we have heaps of signifiers which would tell our customers “This is the kind of place with free wifi,” but no signifiers that would indicate otherwise. How can we change our contexts to remedy this?

Innovating Context: Ordering

(This post is a part of a series on innovating retail spaces for progressive coffee shops. The original post can be found HERE)

One of the most common features we find in coffee shops, from local meeting spots to high-end uber-progressive places, is the ordering style. One waits in line, one orders at the counter, pays, then waits for their beverage to be called out.

This feature is common in a much larger context than just coffee shops; this is how Chipotle works, this is how White Castle works, this is how virtually an entire segment of the food industry operates its ordering system – and for good reason! It’s efficient, it allows for a low labor cost, and it is so familiar to American consumers that they require no signage or instruction – we see the counter, we see the style of place, we know the drill. Let’s call this order style Counter Service.

I think that as progressive coffee people, we need to break this kind of context. If we keep presenting excellent coffee in the same style and context as folks serving less-stellar coffee, we can’t expect our customers to identify the difference between these places. Selling our coffee using the Counter Service model is perhaps not presenting ourselves as well as we could. This isn’t because we have poor customer service (though we sometimes do), but rather that humans identify patterns, and the Counter Service style is so familiar, and so associated with a certain kind of product, that it is a little crazy to do battle with those expectations.

What are the alternatives?

Well, what contexts do we associate with high quality food? To me, Table Service seems to be the highest broad ordering context that I associate with quality food – a party enters, is seated, and orders from someone who comes to them, and the food is then brought to them, and cleared, and so forth.

This kind of service could behoove what I think of as a classic continental cafe; ample food offerings, beer and wine, as well as an espresso menu. The more progressive American cafe seems less interested in food offerings – at least prepared foods, as we all know scones and muffins aren’t going anywhere. Without a broad food menu, I doubt the average ticket could support that kind of labor investment.

If we want to stick to high-end coffee, and avoid extensive prepared food menus (which may or may not be the best way to go – I think good food and good coffee can coexist), what is our best move? How can we combine the low-cost of Counter Service with the more desirable context of Table Service?