We are living in a time where the average consumer is both spoiled for choice and simultaneously vexed at the sheer number of options available for great coffee and brewing equipment. What used to be a need for more and better green and gear has shifted to a need for how to choose and then use it all to get the best results for you. At the same time professionals, who represent coffee to the consumer, are increasingly hungry for reliable knowledge beyond their shops but lack the time that home enthusiasts tend to have more of.
In the field of resources for making sense of coffee, today's guest, Lance Hedrick, stands out for his friendly, accessible, and well reasoned and researched approach to demystifying brewing for both pros and the average consumer.
Lance Hedrick is a PHD student truanted coffee student who gave up his path in academia and pursuing a professorship in philosophy and linguistics to pursue coffee science and equipment.
In Lance's time working in coffee, he has worked bar, in a kitchen, bagging coffee, making deliveries, roasting, quality control, managing, opening a shop, consulting, designing bars, servicing equipment, training, and is currently overseeing wholesale for the west coast and international accounts for Onyx Coffee Labs.
As an accomplished competitor Lance has won somewhere over 30 latte art throw downs, is a 2 time CoffeeFest Latte Art World Champion, and has won 3rd and 2nd, respectively, in the US Brewers Cup Championship. Finally, he has been a coach to Andrea Allen in the Barista Championship since joining in 2018.
Lance has taken his passion for academia and coffee and combined them to create his popular Youtube channel where he breaks down the complex world of coffee and coffee equipment to make enjoying the best coffee accessible to all.
In our conversation today we are going to hear a bit of Lances story and dive deep into the subject of how he approaches research, coffee education, and the importance of creating in roads for consumers to more fully enjoy specialty coffee.
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On this Founder Friday we go to Jakarta, Indonesia to explore the story of Kopikalyan! This ground breaking roaster retailer sources, roasts, and serves exclusively Indonesian Coffees. Innovation, Hospitality, and relationships are what drive this fantastic company and in today's episode we get to talk to Iman and Putri, two of the co-founders about how they took this business from idea, to reality
Iman & Putri are two of six friends who co-founded Kopikalyan, both studied in Melbourne, Australia, one of the best cities in the world to enjoy coffee. The idea to start a coffee shop business happened over a casual conversation in 2016 and today Kopikalyan has 4 outlets in total, 3 in Jakarta and 1 in Tokyo, Japan.
Iman is an ex-banker who turned into a full-time entrepreneur due to his interest in F&B Business. Upon entering the coffee industry, he got interested in enhancing the synergy between upstream & downstream, particularly on how coffee shops could directly support a better life for farming families of Indonesia through fair prices.
Putri is an architect who previously worked on many hospitality projects. What interests her most about designing a coffee shop is the limitless possibility of always creating something different, in terms of customer’s experience as well as branding identity. She believes that visuals are an important aspect of showcasing great coffee. A coffee shop should be representing and spotlighting the coffee as well as the people behind that cup of coffee.
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Links:
Instagram @kopikalyan
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Do you have an agreed upon way that you and your staff talk to each other? Poor communication is one of the most cited issues in exit interviews yet we rarely end up doing much to address it specifically.
Since we have been focusing on values in action lately today on Shift Break I thought it would be good to discuss how to collectively establish rules of engagement that will help guide how everyone in the business thinks about, approaches, and works with each other.
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We all make mistakes. It's part of the learning and growth process for everyone. As you go in your career you will find that there are certain types of mistakes that are worse than others in that they have a greater negative impact on you and those around you.
I have been doing this coffee thing long enough to have amassed a nice list of those types of mistakes and today I want to share that list with you and elaborate on each one. I am pretty sure most if not all the listeners here will experience or are currently mired down in one or more of these mistakes and it's my hope that by shedding light on it in this episode you will be able to correct course sooner than I did!
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Your coffee packaging holds more than just coffee. It holds an incredible amount of potential for communication of values, impact on the supply chain, and how coffee itself is percieved and succeeds in the global market. Packaging might not seem like the most compeling topic but the package itself may be on of the main tools that compels consumers and how we approach it matters greatly.
Today on the Rate of Rise series from Roast Magaine we will be exploring pacaging and beyond with the author of the Sept/Oct 2021 article "The Perfect Package", Ever Meister.
Ever Meister has worked in the coffee industry for 20+ years in a wide range of capacities, but primarily she is a journalist, educator, and communicator whose work focuses on issues of access, equity, and ethics. She is the author of New York City Coffee: A Caffeinated History (The History Press, 2017) and the host of the coffee-marketing podcast In Good Taste on the Sprudge media network.
A conversation with Ever will always lead to the deep and existensial issues at the root of our industry and this one is delivers that in spades along side some extremely practical tips and advice to put into action as your develop your own coffee packaging.
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Links:
Ever Meister on Instagram: @justmeister
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We often talk about charitable assumption and being proactive to address the needs of our guests. But how often are we considering the way we approach the relationship between owners and managers? There are a lot of expectations going both ways but not always a lot of understanding.
Today on Shift Break we are going to talk about how if we can lean into communication and the spirit of mutuality then I am going to guess a lot of bad blood can be avoided.
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Good intentions are nice and all, but how do you make sure that you can actually deliver on your ideals for quality, service, and beyond? The answer is systems. Unfortunately many shops are organizationally flying by the seat of their pants and delivering an inconsistent and frustrating experience. A well developed set of processes, lists, and procedures will give consistency to the standards we strive to offer our baristas and guests as well as aid us in developing a culture where people feel confident and cared for.
But how do we create, establish, and refine systems and processes so they serve our shops and people well? That is exactly what we are going to cover today in a pretty thorough examination of the steps needed to make and launch systems in your cafe.
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When the customer first walks in the what do you think about them? Well chances are your immediate thoughts will be based on your assumptions formed in conversation with fellow baristas and the inside jokes we have at their expense. Yes, customers can say and do very similar things but why is our default to seek out ways to dismiss and make a caricature of them rather than trying to serve them with the benefit of the doubt as individual?
Today on Shift Break we are going to talk about the problem with our natural tendency to train our brain to react to and think about customers in ways that ends up creating an unfair and less than stellar coffee experience.
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It's pretty easy to write our a set of company values. But how do you teach them in such a way that your staff own them and live by them? Now THAT is not easy. If you want to teach your staff the company values so that you are confident that they know, understand, and act according to them, even if you are not there, then todays episode is for you. We will be talking with about the five tips and methods needed to teach values effectively to your baristas and create a culture the lives those values out every single day.
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One of the questions I get asked a lot by consulting clients is when they should instal or think about hiring a manager. I see lots of coffee shops get into the mindset that they “should” have a manager but I don’t often see people give competing reasons other than it is part of the coffee shop structure they see elsewhere.
Today on Shift Break we are going to chat about a couple reasons you should delay the installation of a manager and why doing so will help you make a better management decision when the time is right.
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