Make the Worst Drink Better!! Book Recc #3
Good morning! It's Saturday! It's pouring rain! I'm home drinking the rest of this Colombia Mildred-Munoz coffee from Relampago in St. Augustine. It's almost a month old now but has really maintained it's vanilla/guava flavor. This week has been pretty productive! I had cavities filled on Tuesday, I got locked out of my Facebook account which has kept me off my phone (I had no Idea how many apps need a Facebook login), we got the keys to our new house, and I got the first draft of the architect's plans!
Essentially these plans include an overhead layout and fire rating of all the walls, demolition plans for the floors and partition walls we want to take down, and the look/build of the coffee bar. There are also plans for the "finishes" of every surface, meaning flooring, painting, tiling, and countertops. I was really surprised at how much they were able to draw without an in-person visit, but I had a few notes on what was missed and now we're waiting on a second draft. Next week assuming we have that draft I'll go over this process more in depth.
This week we're talking about Consistent Drink Quality!
There are some layers to this, but what it comes down to is making sure you have bomb espresso before you worry about that seasonal latte. Think about how the majority of your menu affects the majority of your customers, and how you're more likely to deliver a consistently great experience if you can nail those simple every day drinks that often get taken for granted.
That's Making the Worst Drink Better.
Today I'm referencing the awesome book "What I Know About Running Coffee Shops." This has to be the most comprehensive book on opening a café that I've read so far, unfortunately the physical edition with shipping is like 70$ here in the states at the time of writing. I'd recommend the kindle edition so you can flip back and forth.
My three favorite lessons from this book so far are 'go big or go small' (keep the space simple rather than taking half measures), the weird 'milk bottleneck' (if you're busy, try having someone constantly just on milk steaming), and of course 'make the worst drink better'.
As we're constantly worrying about what's next, and having FOMO on nitro cold brew or whatever's popular, we need to keep in mind that a really good simple drink will do a lot more for your reputation in the long run. I had a conversation with someone last month who I hadn't talked to since before starting this project, and there first comment was something like "I'm sure you'll make really high quality drinks." Which I spend a lot of time thinking about.
I'd much rather have a small excellent menu, where you can taste every piece of the pie. Where my Barista's are psyched about the quality of the chocolate in the mocha, or the sourcing of the milk in our lattes. Where we are more worried about having the best vanilla latte, than we are about having surprising seasonal drinks every month. We'll get there for sure, but it is so super important that we're paying attention from the bottom up to really knock it out of the park when we reach the top.
That's all for today, thank you everyone for reading,
- Elias
