Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/109835
that would make the information interesting and relevant. As much as the client asks...the professional should tell in an interesting way." LISTEN AND GAUGE Listening and gauging the level of customer interest is the best way to begin the education process, agrees Greg Ubert, founder of Crimson Cup Coffee, a retailer/roaster based in Columbus, Ohio. "Not everybody has same level of interest in learning about different kinds of coffee," Ubert says. "However, I look at it through the lens of, whichever level somebody is, wherever they are, there's an opportunity to move somebody along." In many cases, "educating" customers is a simple matter of suggesting alternative drinks that might be a step up the scale of sophistication. "If you have customer who loves these big sugary sweet drinks, maybe they start to come in on a regular basis, and maybe you convince them at some point, 'Why don't you try a smaller one? This espresso is really phenomenal and you'll get a little more of that coffee flavor and you'll still have a wonderful drink,'" Colombo says. "Then all of a sudden, wow, they start to taste that coffee and appreciate it, and pretty soon they're getting a smaller drink, and then maybe they transition to a cappuccino, and then maybe they're drinking Americanos and straight shots of espresso, and then all of a sudden really understanding and appreciating all the nuances of that coffee profile." Ubert says that Crimson Cup, with a brew bar and a steady supply of single-origin coffees, is well equipped to help customers along the path of coffee sophistication—if and when they're ready to travel it. "We view it from the standpoint of, wherever somebody is, certainly we believe that we can give them something better and move them along the way," Ubert says, noting that he himself moved from being strictly a drip coffee drinker, to mochas, then to lattes, cappuccinos and other espresso drinks. "I kind of traveled the spectrum, and I think that that was a positive thing for me," he says. "And I think it can be a positive experience for others, if they're exploring different opportunities." It may also help just to suggest different ways to consume the drinks they already order, Ubert says. "If somebody wants to put cream into a Costa Rican La Minita, there's a certain way to say, 'You know what, have you ever tried it without? Let me just do this Chemex for you, of this Costa Rica La Minita. Do me a favor, and if you don't like it this way, then obviously, put cream in it,'" he says. Glen Poss, co-founder of NuRoast, a roaster based in Spokane, Wash., thinks baristas should be as flexible as bartenders: "Perhaps a barista should function like a great bartender, willing to help the customer find their beverage of choice based on mood and time or just slam down the old reliable when the customer is not in a exploratory mood." Snobbery in the specialty coffee world is not confined to interaction with customers. Coffeehouse owners, especially those who are relatively new to specialty coffee, are just as liable to be intimidated by the array of coffees available from a roaster like Stumptown. Colombo says Stumptown strives to make its wholesale customers as comfortable as its retail ones. "If a wholesale customer's going to come in and they're excited and want to carry Stumptown, the last thing we want to do is make them feel stupid," Colombo says. "The biggest thing for me, and this is applicable on both the retail and wholesale side, is very much that we are educating, but we that we are also learning together." Colombo sees snobbery as something that the specialty coffee industry as a whole needs to eradicate. His trips to coffee farms in Latin America have left him, he says, with a sense of humility about how hard the farmers have to work and how much effort goes into every step of the supply chain. "It's all lost if someone comes into our café and has a bad experience because they feel they were looked down on or treated with coffee snobbery," he says. "That's counterproductive to everything we stand for." SCR www.coffeeshopmanager.com Smart Solutions For Your Shop The #1 Coffee POS now features integrated online & smartphone ordering. Call or click for a FREE online demo today! 866.447.0033 sales@coffeeshopmanager.com 15