Barista Magazine is your home for the worldwide community of coffee and the people who make it.
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/178542
Maintaining consistency in one café is hard enough, though— how can it be possible to achieve that level of predictability and repeatability behind multiple counters? (There are three Sweetleaf locations in two boroughs; Rich bounces among them almost daily to check in.) It might not be easy, but it's certainly not impossible to set and maintain standards in a coffee shop without seeming like a micromanager, or stifling baristas' skills and expression. With a little planning, some confidence, and a lot of communication, any café can become an irrefutably reliable source for top-notch coffee every time, from everybody. Where—And Why—Consistency Counts The relationship between consumers and the businesses they patronize is rooted very deeply in trust, especially when it comes to food and drinks. To breach that trust—even in a seemingly positive way, like that sole barista who's able to please the tough customer above—can result in unmet expectations, poor reputation, and lost business. "From a customer's point of view, when you go in to buy something, you go in thinking you're going to get a certain product," Rich says. "Imagine going to a pizzeria and one day it's good, and the next day it's not good, and it all depends on who's working that day. That's a nightmare!" Jessica Lamb, who owns Dottie's Coffee Lounge in Pittsfield, Mass., agrees that a café needs to fulfill its promises to its customer base in order to please them—and have them coming back for more. "In our community, shelling out $4 for a latte is asking a lot, and we make sure that our employees work hard to make that investment is a good one," she says. Service, products, and performance can help establish a rapport with the clientele: In order to earn trust across the counter, anyone who walks in the door should be able to expect drinks and food that will be uniformly delicious, service as attentive and welcoming as always, and that the good experiences they have there will be the norm, not the exception. Scott Lucey, head of barista training for Milwaukee, Wisc., roaster-retailers Colectivo Coffee (formerly Alterra Coffee Roasters), has 12 locations to keep tabs on—soon to be 13—and stresses that consistency among the shops is "very, very, very important. 74 barista magazine It's inherent that our cafés have their own independent character and personality, this is considered well before a café even exists, starting at where the café is, what neighborhood…up to all things design, what machine they have, whether we customize things," he says. Despite the individuality of each Colectivo shop, Scott ensures that that the baristas and trainers "guarantee the coffee quality will be the same as it is everywhere" in addition to doing "enough stuff 'off the cuff ' to make each café…feel as an individual from the group." Establishing Standards The first step when designing and implementing a consistency program is to define quality in the context of the business. A café owner or another team leader should build a complete vision of the menu and best practices in his mind before committing to it: Every drink should have a standard recipe, and every recipe should have a reason. Just as a chef designs her dishes and then passes the work of re-creating them on to a kitchen staff, so does a coffee-shop owner task his baristas with fulfilling each drink by filling each cup properly. From an operations standpoint, it's pivotal to have someone in charge of setting the standards and leading by example, whether it's the business owner, one or more managers, a beverage director, or whomever. Everything in the shop should be deliberate—from the type of coffee and milk on hand to how much of each goes in every drink—but that doesn't mean they also have to be definite. Things may change over time, and that's OK. Heck, it might even be preferable, as no one wants the menu or the atmosphere in the café to become stagnant. Clear leadership is fundamental, however, to eliminating chaos in the ranks. "The challenge I always give baristas is, 'This is our formula, this is how we do it here…but if you find something better, and you can measure it…we'll change the entire program and we'll all do it your way, because we want to do it how it's best.' But if it's not repeatable, it's not usable," says Rich. "I'm putting you in the position where every shot that you pull [within the formula] is pretty good. You can make it great by tweaking it—one degree here, shaving off or adding a gram there—but I'm starting you off in a place to succeed."