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There are 850 spirit bottles behind the bar Alex Negranza manages (Liberty Bar in Seattle, to be specific). His forays into signature-drink preparation include participation in the United States Barista Championship and his work as a café consultant. Pete Licata won the 2013 World Barista Championship with his signature drink Coffee Therapy, which was by design simple to prepare: "Double shot of Arnulfo Leguizamo espresso on ice, palm With this mix of mixology backgrounds, viability is, sugar, and bi ers. Stir, strain, and serve in a champagne coupe," Pete instructs. Because of simplicity for him, a far less prevalent question. Compared with of preparation, baristas at Parisi Artisan Coffee cafés—where Pete works—are able to prepare the craft cocktail preparation, specialty-coffee service drink as a regular offering for customers. can often seem, if anything, a little underambitious. "One coffee shop to another, we all make the "So I think as far as signature beverages in coffee go…we're just same six beverages…now if we apply that to the cocktail community, kind of stuck here doing the same things over and over again," Alex imagine if you walked into every single bar and they all had the same says. "A certain array of experimentation has been shown by comexact drinks," Alex says. "'Oh, did you want a Maker's Mark Manhattan peting baristas, such as, 'I'm going to infuse my milk with a donut,' or or did you want a Jim Beam Manhattan? You got two options because whatever it might be, but we're still kind of limited to those very small one's a lick warmer and one's down the street.'" changes as far as signature beverages go." Biting sarcasm aside, his point is valid. The coffee shop that proAs Alex sees it, the signature beverage in the coffee shop can vides an appreciable selection of coffees is an exception, not a rule, address this homogeneity while tackling another sticking point in the and there's a lot to be gained through side-by-side comparisons of a specialty-coffee industry: profit margins. "Now," Alex says, "we are, product. A distinction should be made, however, between a bottled I hate to say this, we are overly transparent in coffee… There's not product and a coffee that must be brewed exactingly to order. A bar enough, for lack of a better term, smoke and mirrors." with a hundred different gins is eminently more achievable than a cofThe in-shop signature drink "needs to be approachable to consumfee shop with a hundred coffees. ers, so how do we do that? Let's cater to that sweeter side, like, what PHOTO BY KENNETH R. OLSON and simple service model. It's a proven paradigm and requires relatively few ingredients (essentially just coffee and milk), which—when you consider the complexity of stocking, resting, and preparing high-quality espresso coffee—is just as well. At competition, the additional time taken in presentation and production is feasible, and the price less consequential; the preparation model is, after all, small-scale. When you transfer such a beverage to a café situation, you run the risk of impeding a well-oiled service machine. Reigning New Zealand Barista Champion Nick Clark of Flight Coffee in Wellington also has a plan for a signature beverage in the works. Inspired by this year's creation for his WBC routine, Nick and his business partners may soon introduce the drink to their shop, the Hangar. Before any rollout, however they have a few practicalities to ponder. "Time would be probably the first factor to take into consideration," he says. Unlike at a competition, "in the shop we unfortunately can't spend 15 minutes with every customer." As a signature drink service philosophy, they have to aim for "the same result but without all the follow-through." "Second would be consistency," says Nick. By definition, the signature beverage usually falls outside of any usual preparation model, and training all the shop baristas to uniformly produce the drink is paramount to its success in the café. "After that it just kind of comes down to incorporating it into your already established systems and the culture of your shop, which I think would be the fun part," he says. www.baristamagazine.com 69