Detailed Menus: Are they necessary?
Read this post by James Hoffman about Prufrock Coffee's menu board.
http://bit.ly/bmzKif
This raised some questions in my mind. Does simplifying the menu allow for better communication between barista and customer? Would a board like this work in stateside shops? Would we lose sales, or gain educational opportunities? In what ways would this separate the indie shops from the franchises, and how could we capitalize on that?
I have more questions, but let's start on these...
http://bit.ly/bmzKif
This raised some questions in my mind. Does simplifying the menu allow for better communication between barista and customer? Would a board like this work in stateside shops? Would we lose sales, or gain educational opportunities? In what ways would this separate the indie shops from the franchises, and how could we capitalize on that?
I have more questions, but let's start on these...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on
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A fellow barista sent me a PM asking about the menu I posted to this thread and how we execute our menu. At the new Spro we have a "brew bar" set up specifically to handle the task of brewing our selection of coffees by the cup, to order. The setup is similar to that of a home kitchen with the "island" working as the "brew bar". Customers order and then can "hang out" watching our baristas prepare their cup of coffee.
We work with six primary coffee roasters: Hines/Origins, Ecco Caffe, Stumptown, Barefoot, Counter Culture and Intelligentsia. All the coffees for service are selected through blind cuppings and then paired with one of seven brew methods: pour over, french press, aeropress, clever, eva solo, chemex or vac pot. We taste each coffee under each brewing condition to offer the coffee in what we feel is the "ideal" brew method for that particular coffee, however any customer can ask us to brew that coffee in any method.
By utilizing this approach, the customer has the opportunity to watch as their coffee is being brewed and the barista has the opportunity to engage the customer in a discussion about the coffee to their comfort level. Some customers just want a coffee while others want an in-depth discussion - our baristas can handle either extreme. On top of that, the coffee is prepared to order throughout the service day. We do not utilize any sort of batch brewing method to "handle" the morning or afternoon rush.
The image above is of our "brew bar". Most of the brewing apparatus and service/cupware is kept hidden in drawers and the coffee is pre-portioned in containers also kept in drawers. A Fetco HWB-5 water tower provides hot water with integrated drain sink below and a Compak R80 grinds the coffee on station. The station was designed to prevent the baristas from having to "step away" as much as possible. The station features stained mahogany cabinetry, granite countertop, integrated electrical and plumbing with disconnects. The station is also on wheels and can be moved, if necessary. The station is also 34" in height keeping it low enough to brew comfortably as well as unobtrusive as possible for improved customer interaction.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Yates on
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I love the way you are doing this, Jay! Oh, and I love the cat on the Linea, too. :)
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Permalink Reply by Chris on
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What's a 'Haupa'? The only time I've heard the term before is in my other life as an entertainment technician. They're a supplier of cable management tools out of Germany.
And why is it so much more to haupa a cappuccino than to houpa mocha?
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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on
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Haupia is a traditional Island dessert that's kind of a cross in texture between firm jello and pudding made with coconut milk. What Jay's doing exactly with my guess is coconut milk don't have a clue. Likely making a coconut flavored cap' without using coconut flavoring but rather coconut milk!
Chris said:What's a 'Haupa'? The only time I've heard the term before is in my other life as an entertainment technician. They're a supplier of cable management tools out of Germany.
And why is it so much more to haupa a cappuccino than to houpa mocha?
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Permalink Reply by christopher myers on
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Are those ground effects on your espresso machine? Baller.
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The photo was taken the night before our Friends & Family Preview on March 18, 2010. Some of the layout of equipment has changed - one of the Majors has returned to its home at the Towson Coffee Bar, the induction burner has moved to the lab and the Linea has scooched about a foot to the left to give more room to the front line baristas working the register and steaming milk.
Christopher - those indeed are LED ground effects lighting from an automotive supply company in Miami. The individual groupheads also sport custom Halogen lighting that switches on during either volumetric or manual brewing. I designed the lighting system myself because at the time (2004/2005) there were no OEM lighting systems available and I prefer the natural light (6500 Kelvin) of the halogens over the bluish hue of LED lighting.
Chris - Mike is correct. Haupia is actually a Hawaiian dessert of coconut milk and similar in texture to jell-o. The Haupia Macchiato started out as my USBC Signature Drink in 2004 and has been on our menu ever since. The Haupia Macchiato and our version of Bronwen Serna's 2005 USBC Champion Sig Drink "Sweetness" (Honey Macchiato) are two of our most popular signature drinks. We recently added the "Haupia Cappuccino" to the menu because customers were asking for the variation on the drink. Another popular variation has been the Honey Latte but that has not become an official menu item.
In the fall, we will start offering a menu of signature drinks that we have used in previous USBC competitions. Drinks like "Coffee and a Cigarette" and "LobSpro" will find their way onto the Spro menu, along with newer items like: "PBJ" and "Oyster In A Half-Shell".
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Permalink Reply by Copper River Coffee and Tea on
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Hey Paul, saw the thread and thought I would share what we do. So in Peoria, IL the coffee culture still needs to grow and we are slowly transitioning as time goes on. When I took over the business I eliminated quite a bit of foo-foo stuff and some still remains. When we had to make a new menu board however, I really didn't want to do the traditional type of signage you see in coffee shops. Most times there are WAY too much text or information and to me it feels like reading a novel. Or you might see chalkboards which I think are boring, bland and overdone. I didn't want to do anything that you can readily find everywhere else. Here's what we did. We brought in a young college kid who does photography as a business and a hobby and we artfully displayed all our drinks, using our own cups, our own drink ware, some personal, some not, and we took photos of all the drinks we commonly serve in the cafe. NO TEXT! Somewhat like how Steve Jobs says no buttons on his products, I said no text, or very little if at all. The goal was to portray our drinks in a manner that would be self-explanatory enough so that we did not have to explain what it was. At times we do describe what a drink is to a customer, but the occurrence of that is small. I wanted my customers to come in and say, "Oh my God, I want that!" as they point to a particular picture. I took cues from both the franchising restaurant world as well as the concept from Argo Tea in Chicago where they have posters displaying gorgeous beverages that make me drool. The menu board comes in three separate pieces as shown, and we had it printed out on what's known as "gator board," which has a really nice rough, non-reflective surface. I wanted something genuine, something beautiful, something done here at shop. We took every photo at the shop, did all the latte art, and that is who and what we are and we show that on our board. When people see it, they usually think we took stock photography, and we daftly let them know that is not the case. Since then we have risen to having a pour-over bar and elements of 3rd wave yata yata, but this is what we currently have until we can change it. In terms of sales, it has definitely helped overtime, because even if a customer still doesn't understand what the photo is implying, it looks so good anyways that they'll just go for it.
-Scott - Attachments:
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Copper-River-Left.jpg, 569 KB -
Copper-River---Center.jpg, 224 KB
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Copper-River-Right.jpg, 372 KB
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Jay Caragay said:Chris - Mike is correct. Haupia is actually a Hawaiian dessert of coconut milk and similar in texture to jell-o.
Howzat translate to a drink? Or is it more of a desert with espresso poured over the top. I'm not sure that I find that tempting. However, I'm just as unsure that I don't... ; >
As a rule, I'm peevish about menu's that use cutesy names without a detailed description, (menus steeped in decades old traditions aside) or use names that don't really indicate what it is that I'm ordering. If I wanted a 'sorority girl' I wouldn't be in a sandwich shop, I'd be in a cheezy bar that serves primarily sugar water laced with alcohol. And if I wanted a 'bat to the head' I'd be at a parking lot behind a liquor store, not a coffee shop.
T'were my shop, I'd be putting that history and interesting factoids on the menu alongside the name.
Educates and captures your audience all at once.
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Copper River Coffee and Tea said:So in Peoria
Hmmm. Tell Web that a whole lotta people were talking about him in Tucson last night.
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Scott, your board is simple and visually stimulating, generating an automatic response from the customer. Well done. Now that your menu has changed somewhat, will you do the same thing, or will it be a modular design, allowing for more flexibility?
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Hey Chris! I am not sure what you mean by that. Was someone talking about our shop down Tucson way or talking about a particular person from the shop? Just curious to know... Thanks!
-Scott
Chris said:Copper River Coffee and Tea said:So in Peoria
Hmmm. Tell Web that a whole lotta people were talking about him in Tucson last night.
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Paul, thanks for the compliment.
I think we are going to keep with a photographic menu board seeing the success with it. Information is far more accessible with people from a visual standpoint and we are going to continue with that method. We are going to take away: french press, American Cappuccino, mocha bianca, white ras., cut away two coppercinos, cut away two fruit smoothies. We will change the center board photo to something else, but still something that exemplifies the shop in one solid image. We will add: traditional cappuccinos, a new picture for coffee which showcases a chemex brewer instead of just a plain cup of coffee, strengthen the tea section as that comprises 1/4 of the business, and maybe include a pour-over photo as we are now serving these at the shop. I'm not quite sure what you mean by modular though. In terms of replacing the boards themselves they are easily replaced provided they are the same size.
Paul Yates said:Scott, your board is simple and visually stimulating, generating an automatic response from the customer. Well done. Now that your menu has changed somewhat, will you do the same thing, or will it be a modular design, allowing for more flexibility?
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