We’re a strange bunch here. Sure we’re in the coffee business but we’re trying to serve something more than just “regular coffee”. Each day we’re offering something that you’d look forward to drinking and not just a hot cup of brown water that delivers caffeine to the system. We actually pay double and sometimes triple the cost of other coffee suppliers to get what we feel is far superior quality. We like being strange.
Our coffees have great natural flavors - some of which are obvious and some more subtle. Unlike a lot of “coffee shops” these days… we don’t treat our coffees as flavor additives in a milkshake, or something you’d need to drown in some brand of artificial sweetener and half a pint of cream to make it palatable. We respect our coffees. We get excited about the kind of coffee that is so damn good you want to drink it black. Take it from a former fast food coffee customer! As your coffee cools it takes on different tones and you get something different with every subsequent sip.
This kind of quality doesn’t happen by accident- it’s the result of years of hard work by the producers (the farmers) and quality roasters (in our case intelligentsia). At the end of the chain it is up to the retailer/barista (us) to deliver on the promise of the green coffee. There are SO MANY THINGS that could go wrong- at the cafe level and on back to the coffee plantation itself that could ruin that promise. A few years ago I was one of those “regular coffee” types, but I could tell the good stuff from the average/poor stuff. I knew what I liked. Fast forward to today- I know a lot more and I’m very passionate about this industry and realize that you can never stop learning in this business. Quite a few of our customers are on this journey today- some are just starting and some are pretty advanced. I feel that it is our job as a customer-facing representative of the “specialty” coffee industry to get this message across, in small pieces, to our loyal customers that go out of their way every day to enjoy a great cup at our shops.
If you’ve hung in this far and want to read on…
Geoff Watts, the green coffee buyer for Intelligentsia, recently wrote a very informative and enlightening article on the reason behind the relatively high price of the Kenya Gaturiri Auction Lot we’ll be receiving this week as well as the rising cost of coffee around the world. Click on the image to the right to learn more.
I couldn’t help but nod my head as I read it. Preach on brother Geoff!