Kristelle's Latte Art

Ok folks, there you have it – Kristelle, one of our newest baristas (she brewed her first espresso a month ago) had some pretty mad skillz already. This is some of her day’s work. Wild, no? Come into the shop and ask for some bunny latte art. That’s her next challenge!

The thing about coffee is the culture that stems and grows from it. It has such a deep story – from mountainside undergrowth to the tiger-mottled espresso shots coming from that sexy La Marzocco on the counter. And from there, the people that drink it, clearing the morning fog or a latte among friends on a late morning.

What drew me to roasting coffee in the first place is the transformation of a green bean into an awesome brew. What keeps me there, though, is people. People enjoying, people laughing, people going on their merry way. Thank you for coming!

Louis and I went to a business workshop yesterday. As you (or I) might expect, some buzzwords were exchanged – most notably, the venerable Synergy and a fairly recent one, Leverage. And although I jest, they were in context and not abused.

In any case, one of the many good points made during the seminar was about guarantees – what we, as a business, can and could guarantee. It made me wonder a fair bit about the nature of our business. For instance, can we guarantee deliver within 24 hours? No, not really. In most cases we can process rush orders in that time-frame, but that doesn’t make it representative of our company.

The presenter thanked us for the awesome coffee we brought, and that’s when it hit me. Awesome coffee. We’re not really about sudden deliveries and rock bottom prices. We’re about awesome coffee. We can move on from there.

We’ll have to polish these a bit but here’s my first pass at our guarantees:

We guarantee awesome coffee, period. Whether a bulk bag for a commercial client or a tiny cup here in the shop, it will knock your socks off or we’ll try again.

We guarantee ethically sourced beans. We’re in this for the principle, folks, and not the marketing. We have been purchasing fair-trade and organic beans well before being certified. Our coffees are 100% certified fair trade and organic.