At left, a sampling of the amazing pastry selection and vivid design of Coffee Supreme. A barista, middle, pours a lovely cap at Auction Rooms Café (Small Batch Roasters) in Melbourne. Simple menus (right) lend a sleek design aesthetic.
Even little shops you wouldn't expect to have nice coffee served excellent flat whites with correct milk steaming and properly extracted espresso. People are trained well and held to high standards here. At most of the cafés I stopped in, I nearly shed tears over the amount
of incredible customer service and welcoming attitudes with which I was greeted. It was commonplace to be affectionately addressed by the barista as "mate" or "luv" along with a smile when entering a café. Some places in the U.S. are doing this really well, and some places are doing it pretty poorly. But in Melbourne, which is a city with a ton of café competition, I believe this attitude of appreciation for a visit goes a long way.
Further, the largely positive attitudes and pleasant dispositions of the
baristas feed into the larger acceptance of high-end specialty coffee by the city as a whole. This is so incredibly important. While the specialty coffee industry attracts people who tend to be unique, passionate, artistic, and optimistic, I always appreciate when those same people remember they are also in the service industry, and they are servicing customers who have a lot of other (less expensive) alternative choices. I believe and have always said, that we never want someone who is being introduced to specialty coffee for the first time to feel like they aren't cool enough to be at the party, and I never felt like that in Melbourne.
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