This is a repost, hope you enjoy. Originally posted this summer:
This post was born out of an email I just received regarding a local coffee house that opened up in our area earlier this year:
I will never be able to repress the moment when I walked in soon after they opened and said, “Congratulations, the place looks great” (it does, fireplace in the corner, some leather chairs, nice tables) and I asked, “So what are we brewing today?”
The answer was “Regular, Decaf and French Vanilla”.
What?? The answers I was looking for were “Guatemala, Costa Rican or French Roast. For decaf, we have Ethiopian. And of course, we would never insult our patrons by brewing flavored coffee.”
But I figured, he’s probably a guy that the owner hired to help him out and that he would learn along the way.
So then I said, “Oh, do you know where the “Regular” is from?”
Literally he looked at the bag and said, “It’s from Arabica” (He actually included the ‘c” – I am not making this up!).
It’s cool, I’ll stop asking questions to this poor employee who doesn’t know coffee and just order a “Medium Regular” for $2. As we made small talk, he then revealed this bombshell – HE WAS THE OWNER!!! I kid you not, he should have told me he was my father and cut my hand off with a light sabre and I would have had an easier time dealing with it.
I know I’m a bit snobby when it comes to this but you can’t open a coffee houses, charge Starbucks prices and talk like this. I’m even aware that I do not know enough about coffee to open a coffee house (but I also don’t know enough about small businesses either). And while we’re talking about this place, don’t put up a big screen tv over the cool fireplace and show Headline News, Fox & Friends and CNN all day. It kills me to go in there and when I do, I take on the same attitude of entering a port-a-potty. Take a deep breath, get in, don’t look around, do what you got to do, and leave.
My prayer now is that I win the lottery, buy the place, remove the big screen, brew One Village Coffee and get people like Tim Nye to run it.
I totally agree, thats really dumb on the owners part to not be well versed in what he is serving.
ouch!! that made me wince.
Ouch…I drink it light and sweet and I even winced!