Posts Tagged ‘Coffee House’

Posted on July 8, 2008 - by deCadmus

Can Howie Get His Groove Back?

If you’re a Wall Street analyst, you might note that year over year, Starbucks’ valuation has slipped about 40%. If you’re one of several thousand Starbucks employees you may soon find a pink slip in your pay envelope, as the company moves to close 600 stores, eliminating some 12,000 jobs. If you’re an independent coffee house owner, you may be sitting there with your jaw hanging slack, just trying to wrap your head around the idea that, when Starbucks closes 600 frickin’ coffee shops, the move shrinks its overall footprint by a mere 8 points. And maybe if you’re a Starbucks customer you’re just so over that whole Starbucks thing. Sure, Starbucks was the epitome of hip for a while, but then they became, well… McDonalds:

Twenty years ago, it was love at first sip. Like every prisoner of love, I went from downing one cup a day to three or more. How, I wondered, had I gone more than 40 years without a midafternoon break or even a “for no reason” indulgence?

Today those memories are like bitter, stale grounds. These days the breaks aren’t fewer but are often enjoyed somewhere else. That early Starbucks mojo is no more. My disillusionment set in about three years ago, but the company’s ballyhooed “Starbucks experience” died even earlier, killed by a growing bureaucratic culture.

Ouch.

Maybe it *is* about the bureaucracy. There is, of course, a very real danger when you grow to the scale of Starbucks — or McDonalds — and your stores light up every other street corner, shopping mall and airport concourse. At some ill-defined point on your meteoric growth chart you may cease to become the sum of whatever got you there — whether that was a curiously strong cup of brewed coffee, a made-to-order espresso milkshake or  a Happy Meal — and instead morph into a massive real estate holding company that also brews coffee by the gallon pot.

Or maybe it’s something else. What with mortgage meltdowns and gas prices at four bucks and change, a spiraling economy has customers feeling the pinch, caught between guzzling a latte or putting another gallon of fuel in the family hauler. Call it — as financial self-help author David Bach has — the latte factor:

The Latte Factor® is based on the simple idea that all you need to do to finish rich is to look at the small things you spend your money on every day and see whether you could redirect that spending to yourself. Putting aside as little as a few dollars a day for your future rather than spending it on little purchases such as lattes, fancy coffees, bottled water, fast food, cigarettes, magazines and so on, can really make a difference between accumulating wealth and living paycheck to paycheck.

Oh sure… financial gurus have been offering like-minded advice for decades… but those were years that lacked the incentive of four dollar gasoline and upside-down mortgages, too. Maybe folks are actually heeding the collective wisdom of the financial set. Maybe they don’t have a choice.

More likely what’s got Starbucks on the rocks is a bit — or a lot — of both factors. Which isn’t to say that Howard won’t be able to right the good ship Starbucks… but I’d wager the course corrections are far from over.

And while Starbucks is thrashing, other shops –small chains and indies alike — may be able to carve out some new opportunities for themselves, provided they’re able to keep their focus on the fundamentals: making great coffee and satisfied customers, one cup at a time. 

Posted on April 22, 2008 - by deCadmus

Green Up Your Coffee House!

It’s Earth Day 2008. The climate crisis is accelerating, vast sheets of ice are collapsing, islands in the Pacific have been drowned in rising seas, and weather the world over is growing increasingly violent. If we don’t take immediate action — all of us, and right now — we face a future unlike anything we’ve known.

But let’s be honest… running a successful and (ideally) profitable coffee house is something of a high-wire act at the best of times. And — economically-speaking — these aren’t the best of times. You’ve got a budget to watch; a creeping expense column can throw things out of kilter. Fast. It’s not going to do you or your environmentally-minded customers any good for you to bankrupt yourself in the name of ecology.

That said, there are savings to be found in running a more efficient and sustainable coffee house, coffee shop or espresso bar. Some of these savings can be realized pretty quickly, others require a longer view. If you can, don’t just consider today’s bottom line, but tomorrow’s. And next year’s. And — for goodness sake — don’t lose sight of the ultimate bottom line here… the planet’s climate is in crisis. And it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the viability of specialty coffee is at the forefront of that crisis.

In greening up your coffee house, there are (at least) three distinct areas where you can bring your efforts to bear: reducing energy, increasing sustainability, and making it easier for your customers to go green, too. We’ll look at each in turn. There’s a lot to slog through here, so I’ll get right to it.

Reduce energy.

A coffee shop is an energy sink. You’ve got lots of things to keep hot, things to keep cool, and excruciatingly specialized equipment to get them all mixed together. Where do you begin?

Start with an energy audit. Chances are your power company will audit your business at no charge, and provide you with a fairly comprehensive list of recommendations. It’s a great place to start… and an ideal way to benchmark where your business stands, right now. You’ll want that baseline to measure against after you’ve made some improvements.

While your power company will have lots of tips for you in terms of properly insulating your space (ceilings, walls, windows, doors) and savings you might achieve in terms of lighting (switching to CFL fixtures) and the like, chances are they won’t know enough about your specialized equipment — say, espresso machines — to tell you the whole story. You can augment what you learn on an audit report by using a portable or panel-installed power use monitor (think Kill-A-Watt and the like) to measure how much energy your specialized equipment consumes.

You’ll find your coffee house has any number of power-sucking commercial appliances. You’ll probably learn which of these costs you the most to operate in the course of your energy audit; you may not learn, however, which are the most efficient… or more importantly, which aren’t. Lacking any information to the contrary, here’s where you might want to start.

• Dishwashers. You probably know you can save energy and water by running your dishwasher only with a full load. (Of course you do!) You may not know that if you invest in an Energy Star rated commercial dishwasher you can see a pretty immediate return on your investment. An efficient dishwasher can save your coffee house up to 90 MBtus, (about $850 a year on your energy bill) and 52,000 gallons of water (probably another $200 a year).¹
• Refrigerators and freezers. Today’s Energy Star rated chill chests are as much as 35% more efficient² than the bog standard item of the last 10 years, due to advances in compressor and fan-motor efficiency and new anti-sweat technologies (’cause nobody likes a sweaty fridge.) Your new refrigerator can pay for itself in a little more than a year.
• Espresso machines and brewers. In a great many cases, you can insulate the boilers of your always-on equipment (much like you’ve insulated your shop’s hot water heater, right? Right?) Mind you, if you don’t know the internals of your brewers like the back of your hand, it’s probably best to have it done by your service-tech. A flaming espresso machine is decidedly not eco-friendly; we’re probably talking about kevlar, not simple fiberglass batting.
• Coffee roasters. Clean, clean, clean! A clean roaster is not only a safe roaster, it’s also far more efficient than one that’s choked up with years of coffee oils, a creosote-filled exhaust and clogged air vents. You may be surprised with the energy savings you realize.

So maybe it’s not in your budget to spring for new, high-efficiency appliances this year… there’s no reason you can’t make sure the appliances you have are operating at peak performance. Clean your fridge’s evaporators, condensers, and heat-exchange coils. Replace worn and leaky door seals. Better still, get a regular service regimen going so that all of your equipment is operating well throughout the year.

Increase sustainability.

Greening up entails more than just curbing your shop’s power demands. It’s also about breaking some bad habits, many of them having to do with things we simply throw away. After decades of disposable everything, we’ve become conspicuous consumers of our limited natural resources. And it’s got to stop.

• Enough with the plastic cold cups already. Bio-polymer alternatives biodegrade in commercial composting landfills inside a month; plastics are forever. Greenware cups from Fabri-Kal make petroleum-based plastic cold cups obsolete.
• Nix those unrecyclable paper hot cups. Look into compostable paper cups like the ecotainer from International Paper, lined with a corn-polymer resin that’s compostable and will degrade over time.
• Still double-cupping? Just stop, already. Please. Products like the Java Jacket are pretty much de rigeur and new biodegradable entrants like the ecoSleeve appear to work just as well for cold cups, too.
• Want to take a really big step? Consider getting rid of disposables altogether!
• Recycle! How many gallons of milk does your coffee house consumer every day, and how many plastic jugs do you empty as a result? If you’re not recycling, that adds up to a heaping pile of forever in a landfill. Recycle your consumables. More, make it easy — like, really easy — for your customers to do the same.
• Use green cleaning products. Green cleaning agents are safer for your employees to use, and they typically don’t contain any VOCs (volatile organic compounds).³ Check with the Green Restaurant Association for a list of endorsed products.
• Buy food locally. When you purchase locally grown foodstuffs, suddenly all of your customers are localvores. More to the point, locally produced milk, fruits and vegetables are fresher, taste better, and your dollars support your own community (rather than some faceless transnational food cartel.)

Make it easier for your customers to go green, too.

People are waking up — finally! — to the stark realities of global climate change. And increasingly, folks the world over want to do something about it. People are setting back their thermostats, choosing cars with better gas mileage, replacing their light bulbs — all the while looking for opportunities to do more. You can help.

• Offer organics. By all means, start by offering a selection of great organic coffees. More, make an organic coffee your house blend; your standard espresso. But don’t stop there! Look for local, organic milk and dairy suppliers, bakers and folks who farm great produce. Make organic an every day thing.
• Switch to recycled paper products. From paper towels to napkins to bath tissue, recycled paper products — no longer limited to options of “brown” and “rough” — are an increasingly compelling alternative to virgin fiber sources.
• You know and I know that folks just love those cute little bottles of water. More, we both know those little plastic bottles are just plain stupid, ecologically. So do something about it. Offer ice-cold, filtered water to refill your customer’s reusable bottles, to start.
• Encourage customers to use their own mugs. Whether you want to host a wall of customer cups for your regulars, or offer a discount for folks who drop in with their travel tumbler in-hand, get behind your customers’ efforts to green up their own lives.
• Educate your customers. Going green isn’t one of those private, hair-shirt-wearing sort of things… it’s something that you want to make some noise about. Let your customers know that you’re going green. And how. And why. By demonstrating your commitment to the environment, and by making it easy for your customers to make good choices in your place of business, you help them make greener, more sustainable choices everywhere.

Final thoughts… and an invitation.

Greening up your coffee house can save you money (in the long run, certainly, even if it may have some up-front costs). And going green can improve the morale of your staff even as it boosts the loyalty of your customers — all of them. Greening up means a safer, healthier place of business, and will ultimately lead to a safer, healthier environment. Most of all, going green is simply the right thing to do.

While I’ve thrown a lot of ideas into this article, it’s really just a start. I welcome your feedback, your ideas, and your stories about how you’re greening up your coffee house… the challenges you face, and how you overcame them. We’re in this together, after all.

I’m not the only one talking about the intersection of coffee houses and sustainability these days. See also:

• Matt Milletto’s Going Green in Your Coffee House, part 1 and part 2.
• Stewart Fritchman’s Sustainable Coffeehouse video

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Notes and Links

1. Source: Energystar.gov commercial dishwasher savings guide. ↩
2. Source: Energystar.gov commercial solid door refrigerator / freezer savings guide. ↩
3. See Treehugger.com for more on volatile organic compounds. ↩

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Posted on April 14, 2008 - by deCadmus

The Coffee Scene, Pittsburgh Edition

In the wake of the Starbucks’ public makeover, and with the SCAA show rapidly approaching, there’s a bevy of coffee-centric ink (’lectronic and otherwise) flowing at the moment. Lots of publications are taking a look at their local coffee scene, trying to figure out who the players are — and discovering that the coffee shop just ain’t what it used to be. (Hoorah.)

Here’s a take on the Pittsburgh coffee scene (featuring the fine folks at Aldo Coffee, among others.)

“Our goal,” offers Rich Westerfield, genial co-owner with wife Melanie Westerfield, of Aldo Coffee on Mt. Lebanon’s Washington Road, “is to raise the level of conversation and appreciation of what coffee can be.”

You go, Rich!

Locally, upper-end coffee shops “have become a central place,” Westerfield says, for many the magical Third Place – after home and work. Priming the French press, Aldo, for example, brings in ska bands and steel drums. One church actually meets there monthly. “Coffee houses bring people together,” he says. “They’re oases of community in a city.”

Ska, steel drums and church groups. Nice.

Posted on March 20, 2008 - by deCadmus

Starbucks’ Shiny New Shamrock

Listen… Hear that?

 
. . . . . .

That’s the sound of thousands of coffee retailers gasping for air, reeling from a sucker-punch. These are folks who’d aspired to get themselves a Clover… the commercial, cup-at-a-time coffee brewer that’s been described as the signal development to usher in the age of brewed coffee, the way to change how we think about brewed coffee, and — most earnestly — as a major point of differentiation between independent coffee shops and the behemoth that is Starbucks. These are folks who’ve just found out that Starbucks has decided to acquire the company that makes the Clover brewer. That’s right… Goliath just bought David’s slingshot.

And that odd tap-tappity-tap noise you hear? That’s the sound of every single coffee retailer who has a Clover on order speed-dialing Seattle to see if they’ll still get theirs.

But honestly, how could Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz resist? After all, it was Howard who issued the much-leaked clarion call that railed against the commoditization of the “Starbucks experience.” Howard wanted romance; Howard wanted theatre; Howard wanted the smell of ground coffee to once again permeate Starbucks stores. And most recently, Howard showed us all he wanted a consistent experience, by shuttering every single retail Starbucks for a day to retrain its barista staff. The Clover brewer delivers all that — and most importantly — it delivers a really, really great cup of brewed coffee.

Provided, that is, that you start with really great coffee beans. So far, the couple hundred Clover brewers in the market today can be found at boutique (call ‘em Third Wave if you insist) coffee retailers that offer only the best of the best — Cup of Excellence auction lots, micro-lots of beans from extraordinary growers — and who roast their coffee with the same extraordinary care as they source it. Starbucks has been no slouch in sourcing some pretty good beans, themselves… but when it comes to the roaster, can they lighten up?

Starbucks could no more likely change its signature roast style than a leopard shed its spots. They could, however, extend their line with a new crop of lighter-roasted fare… beans that remain true to the character of their origins. And that — at least as much as Starbucks’ acquisition of Clover — could prove a real blow to indy coffee shops.

Posted on February 22, 2008 - by deCadmus

The Coffee Klatch Anti-Bad-Coffee Movement

Remember that note a few days back where Starbucks was closing up shop for a few hours to retrain its staff? The good folks at Coffee Klatch (Hi, Mike! Hi, Heather!) cleverly decided to offer free coffee while their neighborhood Starbucks shops were closed for a remedial course in coffeeology… and in so doing accidentally started a movement.

“First our announcement started circulating on coffee discussion websites and blogs, then our phones started ringing and email messages of support poured in from coast-to-coast,” says Mike Perry, Coffee Klatch president. “I was shocked to see that our local promotion to demonstrate how much better our coffee is than Starbucks had turned into a nationwide uprising of independent coffeehouses.”

So walk right on in to Coffee Klatch, or a fine, independent coffee house near you, order yourself a cappuccino, and hum a few bars of Alice’s Restaurant. With feeling.

Posted on September 5, 2007 - by deCadmus

Coffee Notes from All Over

• Say what you will about the Grey Lady’s reporting, they still do a great obit, and their remembrance of Alfred Peet is warm and packed with fondness. More still, at The Daily Californian, and The Seattle Post Intelligencer.
• A little late to the party? The big news this week is that Starbucks has entered the fray of single-cup coffee merchants. First question, what took them so long? Second question, why choose Tassimo, a single-cup machine that’s a… what’s the word? Oh yeah… loser.
  

  Kraft launched Tassimo in France in 2004 and later extended the business to the United States, Canada and other countries.

  But the business failed to live up to initial expectations and in January Kraft decided to take a $245 million asset-impairment charge related to the business, largely due to lower manufacturing capacity utilization.

  Big picture: Starbucks’ entry to the market can only help sell *everybody’s* brewers as they’ll bring more awareness to single-cup at home than any ten other roasters combined. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the first comment found at Gizmodo’s entry on the news. ;)

• Finally — and this one is worth it just for the photoshopped to-go cup — word on Starbucks entry into Russia.
  

  
  “[W]hile Russians have taken quickly to coffee, drinking patterns here differ from the West. Many coffee shops stay open round the clock, and people like to while away an hour or two slowly drinking and smoking. Coffee House, with 90 shops in Moscow, doesn’t just serve coffee, but beer and vodka too.

  Starbucks spokesperson Kerry Irwin confirmed that except for some ‘local content’ in the food offered, the company would not be changing anything about its global model to cater to local taste.”

  How do you spell glasnost, again?

Posted on August 31, 2007 - by deCadmus

Passages: Alfred Peet, 1920 - 2007

Alfred Peet — founder of Peet’s Coffee, grandfather of specialty coffee in the U.S. — died this week.

Mr. Peet opened his coffee shop at the corner of Walnut and Vine in Berkeley, California in 1966, and awakened the American palate to the high-grown, high quality coffees of Costa Rica, Guatemala and East Africa… coffees that his father had roasted in the Netherlands prior to World War II. More, he helped to establish a uniquely American coffee house culture. Walnut and Vine became a gathering place; a hang-out for musicians and artists, writers and radicals.

Alfred was an inspiration to most everybody in the specialty coffee trade. He famously schooled Starbucks’ founders Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl on the fundamentals of coffee roasting when they were purchasing more coffee for their Seattle store than Peet could roast, himself. His signature deep coffee roast — pungent, smoky, but still distinctive of its origin — became the hallmark of “West-coast” styled roasting.

Alfred Peet always wanted his coffee to tell his story. For forty years it’s done just that.

Thanks, Al.

Posted on August 29, 2007 - by deCadmus

Where Are the Great Good Places?

In a coffee shop, and with her infant daughter snoozing at her elbow, a single mom — recently divorced, and struggling to make ends meet — writes a story about a boy wizard and an enchanted school. She writes in a coffee shop not for inspiration, but because she doesn’t have money enough to heat her apartment. Her story, of course, the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; the single mom, JK Rowling. I’m given to understand both mom and daughter are doing rather well, these days.

Rowling wasn’t the first author to take to the local coffee house — whether for warmth, or inspiration. Voltaire was an early coffee house patron, and he’s said to have tossed back between 50 and 72 cups a day (straying closer than most of us would dare to a lethal dose of caffeine) while writing works such as his fittingly frenzied Candide and Merope and his scathing Letters on the English.

It was a coffee house called Tillyard’s that was the unofficial home of The Royal Society — a clubby bunch who lunched and drank coffee and argued about alchemy — and ultimately published the collected works of their chair, one Isaac Newton. And in Austria you may be hard-pressed to find a coffee house that *doesn’t* boast of an author, poet or playwright who sat at that very table.

Given what passes for coffee house culture today, however, it’s remarkable that Rowling was able to pen a paragraph or two, much less a book empire. For all the lofty talk of the Third Place your chances of finding a Great, Good Place to write the Great American Novel are anything *but* great.¹

John Scalzi skewered most any remaining romantic notions of coffee house writing in his 250-page epic snark — and one of my favorite reads of the year — You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop. And a clip from an episode of Family Guy making the rounds on YouTube doesn’t offer much hope, either. Still, you can’t keep folks from trying…

Of the countless coffee shops I’ve visited, I could probably count those that offered a viable third place on one hand. Which is a shame… and probably a factor of economics. Hard chairs, small tables and surfaces that echo (echo, echo…) tend to get customers in and out the door quickly. So maybe I’m not going to write my novel in a coffee shop. I can deal with that. But shouldn’t I be able to have a conversation?

What’s coffee house culture like in your corner of the world? Got a Great Good Place to share?

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Notes and Links

1. Yeah, I know… the article talks about coffee shops in Scotland, and I reference the Great American Novel. I’m a fan of cognitive dissonance. ↩

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Posted on May 12, 2007 - by deCadmus

More Voices, More Views, More Coffee

Some updating to ye ol’ Blogroll is somewhat overdue, at least so far as the college of coffee blogs goes. There’s lots of interesting new voices out there — folks who are pushing the envelope on roasting, brewing, pulling shots and delivering an over-the-top customer experience — and at the same time making some of the old-guard “coffee men” raise their eyebrows, first in alarm, and then in appreciation for what they find in their cup.

• Stephen Morrissey is barista trainer at Bewleys Coffee Co in Dublin Ireland, and his site — Flying Thud — documents his adventures in coffee. Lots of espresso porn, of course, but he’s also a fan of the drip. His posts will make you pine for European coffee shops you’ve never been to.
• Barrett Jones is a Canadian national barista champ and until recently worked the bar at Vancouver’s most excellent Caffe Artigiano. His site — Dwell Time — offers a glimpse of the extraordinary Vancouver coffee scene.
• Stephen Leighton’s blog — Has Bean — offers the perspective of a coffee guy who sources and roasts some fairly stupendous coffees, which sadly I know by reputation, only. (The reputation is certainly deserved: UKBC winner James Hoffman poured his way to the top of competition with a Has Bean custom blend.) Stephen’s been known to drop by here from time to time to offer an insightful comment or two.
• And last but not least — Barismo — a Boston based group blog contributed to by Jaime, Ben, Ben and Silas. Their writing spans coffee roasting, cupping and delivering a top-tier coffee experience in the coffee house. Oh! And they have a shiny cool tamper design.

Go visit one and all. Frequently. Maybe they’ll each get the hint to post more often.

Posted on April 28, 2005 - by deCadmus

How to Find a Great Coffee House, Part II

We’ve been talking about what it takes to find and recognize those shining beacons of coffee culture in an otherwise barren landscape. For while we are assured the rights of life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness by means of a superior coffee experience is not guaranteed. [As to life and liberty... there may be some shades of gray there, too, but that's another story.]

We’ll assume you’ve covered the basics [see Part I]. Your best next step is to observe… It’s much better to first watch someone else’s drink prepared than your own. In our Utopian coffee house, this is what will happen next. Note: the order of these steps may vary slightly; some may occur simultaneously:

• You’re cheerfully greeted by the barista, who may suggest today’s special offerings, and who will confidently address any questions you may have about their coffees [Do you roast your own? When was it roasted?]

• You choose a cappuccino. Your barista will ask if you’d like it for here, or to go. [Always choose here, if you can.]
• The barista will pour cold milk [was that whole? 2%?] into a cold, clean, empty pitcher. After purging the sparkling clean steam wand, the barista will heat, texture and stretch the milk, creating a mass of tiny bubbles with a mirror-like sheen on the surface… judging by hand and smell [or thermometer] when the temperature is right. Steaming finished, the barista will clean, and again purge the steam wand.
• The barista will start the grinder, remove the portafilter from the espresso machine’s group-head, flush the group and clean and dry the filter basket.
• The barista will dose, level and tamp the coffee into the portafilter basket, brush away any stray coffee, lock the portafilter into the group and immediately pull the shot into a clean, preheated 6- to 7-ounce cup [or shot pitcher].
• The extraction time will be 25 to 30 seconds, and should yield a 1 ounce [single] or 2 ounce [double] shot. [Single or double, the time of the extraction will be the same.] The espresso will pour like honey, and will have a dense layer of reddish-brown crema on the surface.
• The barista will pour the textured milk into the cup with the espresso… and, if you’re lucky, treat you to an artfully poured rosette. Lovely!

Is there a tip jar? Use it! You’ve just had a well-prepared drink.

On the other hand. Here are some warning signs that maybe you want to try another coffee house. Most of these are errors made in blind ignorance of how to properly prepare good coffee… some are sheer laziness.

• You ask for an espresso and the barista reaches for a 8 oz. paper cup [or larger!]

• Coffee is dosed from a full hopper that was ground who knows when.
• The steaming pitcher is filled with milk, then left to steam [and scream!] unattended.
• Worse, the milk in the steaming pitcher is topped-off, or simply reheated.
• Coffee is dosed, tamped, locked in the portafilter and left to wait for a few minutes while the barista does other things.
• The shot is extracted in 8 seconds flat.
• The barista pulls another shot off an already spent coffee puck. [Really!]

You have a right to excellent coffee. You have a right to order your coffee the way you want it. If it doesn’t meet your expectations, by all means let the staff know about it… they can only fix what they’re aware of.

Of course, as the customer you have some responsibilities, too. That leads us to…

The care and feeding of a professional barista. It takes education, dedication and some serious skill-building effort to be a really good barista. To be a great barista requires exceptional sensory skills, lots of experience, gobs of personality and really thick skin. Here’s a few tips that your barista will thank you for knowing:

• Don’t get in the line until you have a pretty good idea what you want. It’s just rude to hem and haw and dither while the queue behind you grows.
• Hang up the cell phone for a few minutes will ya? Or if you simply must take that call, step out of the line.
• Unless it’s on the menu, don’t order a ristretto or a lungo… both require the barista to adjust the grinder for your drink, which is not cool in a busy espresso bar. [Sure, the barista could "cheat" a pull to make it... but that's not what a pro wants to do.]
• If the shop is busy, it’s probably not a good time to riddle the barista with a hundred questions about beans, blends and roast styles…
• Don’t ask your barista to “reheat” your drink for you.
• Let your barista know when you’ve had an especially good drink. Sometimes that means more than dropping something in the tip jar. Especially if the barista’s boss in in hearing range.

I’m certain I’ve only scratched the surface of coffee house sins, and customer foibles. Let me know what I’ve missed…