Coffee Wars
This article is about a guy who walked into an independent coffee shop in the D.C. area, and ordered an espresso over ice. The barista "scolded him, saying that what he was doing to his espresso was 'not okay' and that the store's policy was to preserve the integrity of the drink."
My visceral reaction is that the barista and the coffee shop acted in a snobby and inappropriate manner. Customers should be able to, within reason, get their drinks to their liking. On the other hand, customers should realize there are limits to what they can request.
This can be illustrated by analogy to certain restaurants that offer only a single menu for dinner each evening - a table d’hôte. Diners understand that when they eat there, they must trust the chef's judgment for the most part. If they don't like that, they can go to another restaurant that offers a choice-based menu - a menu à la carte - trusting the chef's judgment to a lesser extent. In other words, for a table d’hôte, the diner has very little discretion, whereas for a menu à la carte, the diner expects reasonably broad discretion.
The problem is that most consumers, myself included, place coffee shops in the category of choice-based menus, not the single menu group. This leads us to expect that we can order coffee to our liking, subject only to a reasonableness standard. The D.C. coffee shop in the article is too close to the table d’hôte, and coffee, the style of which often considered to be a very personal preference, is inappropriate subject matter for this sort of menu.
The D.C. coffee shop is, in some way that is intuitively, but not rationally apparent to me, the inverse of the situation posed in this cartoon:
My visceral reaction is that the barista and the coffee shop acted in a snobby and inappropriate manner. Customers should be able to, within reason, get their drinks to their liking. On the other hand, customers should realize there are limits to what they can request.
This can be illustrated by analogy to certain restaurants that offer only a single menu for dinner each evening - a table d’hôte. Diners understand that when they eat there, they must trust the chef's judgment for the most part. If they don't like that, they can go to another restaurant that offers a choice-based menu - a menu à la carte - trusting the chef's judgment to a lesser extent. In other words, for a table d’hôte, the diner has very little discretion, whereas for a menu à la carte, the diner expects reasonably broad discretion.
The problem is that most consumers, myself included, place coffee shops in the category of choice-based menus, not the single menu group. This leads us to expect that we can order coffee to our liking, subject only to a reasonableness standard. The D.C. coffee shop in the article is too close to the table d’hôte, and coffee, the style of which often considered to be a very personal preference, is inappropriate subject matter for this sort of menu.
The D.C. coffee shop is, in some way that is intuitively, but not rationally apparent to me, the inverse of the situation posed in this cartoon:
posted by JR at 10:38 AM
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