We've french pressed every single coffee that's come through our door since January 7th 2009 and we like it. We'd like to think that many of our customers appreciate the extra effort that goes into it, although we know it is impossible to please and appeal to everyone. We know that some consumers however, still regard coffee as just a pick me up and could care less how it's made, where it's from and the whys to our "pricier" offerings and that's fine to a certain degree. We're able to distinguish the consumers that are willing to hear our story from the ones that will always just call it a "regular". Regardless, we treat every single person that patronizes us the same and appreciate their business. We sometimes must bite our tongues and put snarly remarks behind us, but when customers leave their respect at home, well, we just have to dish it back, with class of course, and yes, I'm sorry Mister, but the gas station is down the street and they probably have the cheaper coffee you're looking for. As a brand new spanking business, we often think twice about what we say and make every attempt at diplomacy because we just can't afford at this point to lose any customers, but we won't take rudeness and barbaric & ignorant behaviors and comments. AND NO, That hot water tower sitting on our counter is NOT a drip machine, nor an espresso machine (that's the shiny monster to your right), this little baby delivers delicious FILTERED hot water to make our delicious coffee. Oy!
But In all seriousness, we didn't want to offer drip coffee because it is so much more fun to "brew" a nice cup of coffee manually, and really, the end result is so much better... and it's also something that you ( the consumer) can actually replicate quite easily at home, granted you have a decent grinder, a bodum press, ( which we sell at our shop) and well, some of our delicious coffee. There is so much talk now about manual brewing method since Starbucks decided to launch manual pour overs in the afternoon in what I believe all 11,000 stores...they're finally catching up with what many independents have been offering for some time now. I'm not sure that we agree with every aspect of their brewing methods, however, we do believe it will probably be beneficial for some of us as they have a much broader share of the market and will hopefully raise some sort of awareness... and then we can take it from there. Some say that we should all be switching to manual techniques and ditch the airpots and thermo's and as much as we'd love this to be reality, we find it difficult to grasp our heads behind the feasibility of this. We don't have enough fingers on our hands to count the rolls of eyes we've been given for telling someone, "oh, the coffee is french pressed and will take 4 minutes" ( mostly in the afternoon). "4 minutes?? what? I don't have time to wait". meanwhile, had they walked in at a local Starbucks, and encountered a few people in line ( a problem we wish we had on a constant basis), they probably would have waited the same amount of time, but for an average, acceptable cup of coffee (IMHO).
It is like comparing a fine dining establishment such as Dinette or Il Pizzaiolo to a Domino's. Pizza it is, all appreciated for different reasons, but not everyone will dig and appreciate a $17 pie, however, the people that do will be forever thankful for that little moment of bliss, on the other hand, Domino's did do its job, it subsided my hunger.
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