Choosing Coffee First, Rather Than Not At All

We Live In A World Of Endless Choices…

With the advancement of technology, our choices, or better yet, opportunities, can feel overwhelming. We have an endless assortment of knowledge and accessibility at the lift of a finger, yet all of it happening at once can feel distracting. This opportunity of endless choices oftentimes can feel more like a burden, and mislead us from our original intentions.

Let me take a few steps back to give another perspective to what i mean (coffee will fit into this, i promise)…

A Story About Gourmet Jam

Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper published a study. Shoppers at an upscale food market experienced a display table with 24 varieties of gourmet jam. The shoppers who sampled the jam received a coupon for $1 off. Another day, shoppers experienced the same display table, except with only 6 varieties of the jam. The same deal remained.

Now here’s the kicker… The large display attracted more attention than the small one, but the people who saw the large display were only 10% as likely to buy the jam, whereas the shoppers who saw the smaller display were 10x more likely to buy the jam.

More choice isn’t always better

Let’s Bring Starbucks Into This

Did you know there are over 87,000 different drink modifications that can be made at Starbucks? Out of those near one hundred thousand decisions, how many times do you think the coffee was considered…the product people actually come to the shop for?

When was the last time you heard someone ask about the origin of the coffee, the processing method, variety, or what flavors to expect from the actual coffee?

Ok…I’m not saying all people should nerd out over their morning cup, but if no one wants to talk about the coffee, what’s the point of adding it? People are either making these sugary lattes at home, or waiting in line at coffee shops to get them. If caffeine and sweetness is what they’re after, they could just use caffeine power (it’s made from the same plant) and mix it in milk and vanilla syrup. Without espresso, these sugary lattes can taste so much better too! It completely removes a concentrated, bitter component often stemming from cheap house blend coffee that just won’t taste like you put water in milk (lighter roasts don’t hold up well in big milk drinks for this reason).

A caffeine powder in sugar + milk will taste better than a sweet latte with espresso, It will be cheaper and so easy for people to do at home, but people still want espresso in their drink, because they are simply used to the routine and making that choice.

Where Do Specialty Cafes Fit In?

Better quality, sustainable practices, paying farmers more…these are a few major selling points Third Wave (modern) cafes use to describe why coffee consumers should make the choice to support them. It’s a feel-good selling point, and it works well. Customers often remark that these specialty cafes serve coffee that doesn’t taste terribly bitter and is actually drinkable (compared to that other big chain cafe).

But, the questions still remains:

When was the last time you heard someone ask about the origin of the coffee, the processing method, variety, or what flavors to expect from the actual coffee?

Third Wave cafes are showing coffee consumers what better coffee tastes like, but it’s still so rare for them to inquire about the coffee itself.

There are still the endless drink modifications made because the customers “like” their coffee made a certain way - either half sweet, creating different syrup blends (like getting a mocha latte with vanilla, etc.) that are unintended on the menu, stopping the espresso short like “Italians do”…whatever it may be…it creates a system that other cafes have to adapt to and say yes to their new customers endless drink modifying demands, even if they know their cafes syrups/espresso/whatever-else will never translate from one cafe to a completely different cafe (using different ingredients) like the customer wants. Cafes that generously fall into meeting all of these consumer satisfaction needs are unknowingly adapting towards giving so many options to their customers, that they end up creating a menu that’s both distracting, unintentional, and doing less of a service to their customers that seem to want more, when in fact, they only want what they already had, what they are used to, NOT the flavor, but the simplicity of knowing what to drink.

Are Specialty Cafes Enough For The Consumer Market, Or Is There A Need For “Less”?

When the Jam experiment mentioned earlier cut their options by 75%, people felt 10x more inclined to purchase the product. If a few great coffee shops were to cut out 3/4 of their offerings, do you think their customers would appreciate it? I don’t think so, because they are not used to the change, and cannot get what they used to have. BUT…I do think a new, unestablished cafe would have great success with an extraordinarily small and simple offerings list.

Imagine if every Barista had every single drink dialed in at a cafe like this. They always knew how the drinks were going to taste because they had the time (and the desire) to try every modification for that cafe. I’m talking about a menu so simple, with two milks (whole and oat), one or two syrups, small milk drink sizes no more than 10 ounces so the lightly roasted espresso always comes through, and one or two coffees able to be made on the menu at one time.

A menu like this would turn every Barista into a seasoned pro, given only a small amount of time to understand how the coffees extract and taste in this small menu spectrum.

Hello Australian Cafes!

If the coffee information and flavors are considered last, It will be the least important.

The Need For A New Type Of Cafe

Every Barista I know has been here before. They want to experience amazing coffee at a cafe, but what they are left with can often be average, at best. These cafes are fueled by the endless amount of drink styles and modifications that favor sugar over coffee. Or something else like drink size, hot or iced, alternative milk, whatever it may be….the coffee is always considered last. Even in Australia (one of the world’s leading quality coffee scenes) the coffee is often outstanding and tastes incredible, but the consumers aren’t fully engaged in what they’re drinking, and the flavors it offers them. An endless amount of 5-ounce Flat Whites later and the coffee is still just a cloudy fog of information, making the drink style favored over the coffee itself.

If we want the people that are sponsoring the entire coffee industry to think of coffee as the most important ingredient, and to understand it as such, then we must create a new type of cafe that revolves around making the customers choose the coffee FIRST rather than not at all.

Having a few different coffee options, each giving their own unique flavor profile, will be crucial for customers to become involved in the coffee they’re drinking. It’s funny, many cafes i’ve worked at gave the option for customers to choose their house blend or their single origin bean if the customer wanted an espresso, cortado, or small cappuccino. We’d have some customers that either said they didn’t care, and were rude (because they’re not used to that decision), or we’d have others that got excited about the decision (because it’s a simple pick). Regardless of which customer they were, having the ability to tell customers “this place is not for you”, or “this place is definitely for you”, without giving them a wishy-washy opinion of your cafe, is what every great marketer on the planet want to do. But it’s so rare to see in coffee, and it’s no wonder why customers are faced with so many other decisions to make that the coffee is by far, the least important option.

The Future Cafe Model

A unique cafe model that’s based on giving their customers the option of choosing the coffee first, in an incredibly simple menu are places like Substance (France), Tornqvist (Germany), Endorphine (Los Angeles), and a few others. What’s interesting is that i’ve heard it’s normal for people to fly in from all around the world to have a seat and experience a coffee bar like this. Just like a Michelin Star restaurant. Now that is a fun customer base to have! It’s all because the choice is simple, and the quality is high.

In order to begin pushing the coffee industry forward, we need to have places like this so people can experience incredible coffee in its truest form. Where Baristas are appreciated because of their knowledge and experience of extracting and tasting coffee, where customers are excited to experience such a rare cafe “gem” they can’t seem to find anywhere else, where Baristas can take time to understand the coffee and their equipment instead of creating a dozen different syrups in the back room or being ridiculed by customers that just want what they’re used to having (because the cafes menu choices are overbearing).

All that being said, the future of coffee still looks so bright. It will begin to reward the Baristas and customers who care deeply about the culture and science of a well-brewed cup, and not leave them bouncing around from one cafe to the next for a better fit for their career or for their customer experience. These people have been the underdogs for far too long.

It’s just a matter of time before people will make the exciting choice of choosing which incredible coffee they’d like to drink FIRST at a cafe, made by expert Baristas, that know the drinks they’ll make throughout the day will all taste phenomenal! It feels like a daydream, but it’s sure to come soon!

Now who’s with me in kicking off this next wave?!

-Connor