Making Coffee at TED Global, Edinburgh 2012

I survived Edinburgh, making coffee for the TED Global 2012 delegates, and came back alive.

It was a pleasure to work with Ristretto and be behind the bar with some of their great baristas. The event was done with a number of partners, supplying brewing  equipment or ingredients, and it was great to work with materials supplied by: Alchemy coffee roasters, Mercanta coffee beans, La Marzocco, Hario and Marco Beverage Systems.

As you can see from the panoramas of the downstairs circular bar, set up of both upstairs and down included 4 La Marzocco FB80s, 4 Mazzer grinders, a Hario/aeropress brew bar, a Marco Filtro flask brewer and a Marco Eco boiler with Uber-Font and also a beautiful section dedicated to brewing the artisan teas of Waterloo Tea.

We got the chance to play with many coffees, a different single origin espresso and two different filter coffees on the brew bar every day. This gave us a real chance to chat with the talkers and attendees of TED, who were all a naturally curious bunch; as you would assume the audience of a TED event to be. They listened openly and asked questions, willing to take a chance on what was recommended to them.

Thanks to Ristretto for the opportunity and lastly Edinburgh’s Brewdog for fuelling us with so many delicious beers.

I’ll leave you with some photos of the week:

Jiri surrounded by steam

Latte Art

Dutch Latte Art Champion Esther displays how her unrivalled passion for coffee has taken over her life.

Waterloo Teas brewing station

Baristas are an unusual breed.

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All Photos by Craig Does Stuff.

Coffee at TED Edinburgh 2012

I am well chuffed to announce that I will be working with Ristretto to serve coffee to the attendees and speakers of TED Global 2012 in Edinburgh. 

If you are not aware of TED, it is an internationally renowned event that gets creatives, designers, intellectuals and pioneers of industry to give talks of their choice. It is a closed event, both an honour to speak at or even be able to attend. The talks can be found online on their site www.ted.com and you are bound to find something to inspire you there.

I have been asked, along with a dozen other baristas from across the country, to head up to Edinburgh and present great ethical coffee to these influential people as a way of showing them what is possible. I have been a huge fan of TED talks for years, so that with serving great coffee from a company like Ristretto, who I have worked freelance with on several occasions, in the beautiful city of Edinburgh is too good an opportunity to miss.

I will be photographing, videoing and blogging my journey and try to make the most of this great opportunity. I will be representing both my new employer The Plough in Harborne and Ristretto on this occasion and could not be more proud to do so.

You don’t sell the coffee, you sell the aroma

In Simon Sinek’s talk ‘How great leaders inspire action’ he said ’People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’ I firmly believe in this. If you what you appear to have in your shop is passion rather than product, people will relate and customers will feel empowered in their purchase of a product as they are investing into a passion.

How does that relate to being a barista? Here are three examples of artisan coffee/tea shops that have given me an outstanding experience as a result of their why.

Teasmith - Spitalfield, London

A place that is completely dedicated to tea and the sensory experience. In order to drink in here, you have to engage with the person serving. All seats are around the bar, there is no menu on the walls, only on a small piece of finely printed paper. You understand you are coming in for an experience in tea, to see a ceremony of the creation of your drink as much as drinking the tea itself.

The why to buy: Like a sitting in and watching a teppenyaki restaurant, they are selling an experience in tea itself and not selling the just tea.

Kaffeine - London

Design is what strikes you first - simple, understated, elegant yet industrial. The uniformity of design across both interior to fine details of takeaway cup presentation makes the shop have a effortlessly cool feel to it. Top this off with some of the best coffee & sandwiches in the city.

The why to buy: They are selling a lifestyle, a place you would want to get your coffee from and not just the coffee you want to get.

Colonna & Smalls - Bath

What Teasmith is to tea, this shop is to coffee. While the shop still keeps its rustic charm, every wall has something geared towards coffee. You sense the expertise and that things are taken a little more seriously - whether that is in their smart uniform that has echoes of the old Italian barista, or the menu of brewing methods and tasting notes - with no prices in sight. Usual coffee shop expectations - large menu, house blends, sugar and milk for black coffees - have been cut out from the shop.

The why to buy: You are buying into an appreciation of a higher level of skill; a willing to get over a hurdle of things not being made easy for you, so you can appreciate something much finer - in this occasion it is coffee.

Apple was used by Sinek as an example and in this Forbes magazine article by Carmine Gallo, ‘Why Apple Store Emlpoyees Won’t ‘Sell’ You an iPad’, Gallo points out the importance difference in an Apple store is that their staff will never push sales upon you, they are only there to inform. They share their passion with the customer and a purchase will eventually be made from caring about the product and the customer will ultimately be more fulfilled because they know more about what they are getting. They will know how to use the product to the best effect, the limitations and future expectations, all because of the honesty and caring of the staff.

This then translates to hospitality, and in this case coffee/tea shops, by customers engaging with the baristas and then in turn caring about the coffee or tea they are tasting. This is not something that can be pressured, this is a soft sell. This is about finding ways, whether is is through design of shop, menu or clothing, for the customer to slowly align their expectations and come with the correct mindset to be engaged. You have to find ways that even a takeaway customer, who may be in a rush, will come to the correct realisation of what you are serving.

The coffee industry, if it wants to make a sustainable income from premium products, have to integrate new ways of engagement to create opportunities to share the ‘why to sell’ of their product and emphasise their differences to both chains and distributors of substandard brews. For more thoughts on that, see Seth Godin’s TED talk on standing out or James Hoffman’s post on A linen napkin.

This is just random collection of thoughts and I would be happy to hear on anyone else’s experience of service or how their expectations have been handled.