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WRITTEN BY MICHAEL PHILLIPS THE MENU AND MORE! Out of all of the articles I am writing for Barista Magazine on Handsome's fi rst year, this is the one that might start a few fi res. To make matters worse, I would also not be telling the truth if I said I did not want it to stoke any fl ames either. T e next span of words is going to be devoted to the menu and methods we are putting into place in our coff ee bar and the reasoning behind them. Do not mistake me, however, to mean that the decisions we have made are the only correct ones or even that anyone else should be making the same ones we are. T ere are endless iterations of what a successful and amazing coff ee bar can be. T is is just us being inspired by investigating the ideas that a few interesting coff ee professionals around the world have put forth, trying to fi nd just what those other iterations can be. I am going to try and soſt en any blow aimed at us by tying the origin of many of these ideas to those amazing coff ee professionals around the globe. Hopefully that way they will take the brunt of any wrath. A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME IS STILL A ROSE No strange ambiguous names, no miscommunication. T ere is a fair chance that many of you are familiar with the radical menu created by Gwilym focused in the content. T ere is a fascinating book out there titled T e Paradox of Choice by Barry Goldman. It explains in detail the concept that greater choice typically results in lower satisfaction. Having a wide array of items on a menu does not serve to make a greater number of people happy as much as it tends to cause everyone to wonder if they made the right choice. It is also not a very far stretch to suggest that when what you produce is focused around very few items, you can probably do a better job at making them than if you have to master a greater number of drinks. One last point in here is also the concept of an identity as a company. For me personally, when I go out for food or drink, I do not look for a business that tries to do everything. I look for places that choose to specialize and do what they have chosen to specialize in incredibly well. Granted, if what you want to specialize in is mainly the space and atmosphere, then perhaps having a wide array of items on a menu will provide more access to that atmosphere for your customers. An establishment that aims for a culinary focus fi rst and foremost, however, in my opinion, is better served by fi nding that niche and nailing it. At Handsome, we are choosing to specialize in coff ee and pretty much just that. T ere will be no chocolate. We will have no tea, chai, smoothies, or booze. Yes, I am certainly grateful that I can go down to Coff ee Bar LA and get a hot chocolate, or swing out to the Silver Lake Intelligentsia and have Charles Babinski prepare me a lovely Oolong tea (highly recommended; he really knows his tea). It's just not what we do or what we want Handsome to stand for in peoples' minds. GIRL, YOU'RE SWEET ENOUGH We pilfered this next idea in much the same fashion as we determined our menu, only here, we looked to another British WBC champion: James Hoff mann. In our coff ee bars, we all set standards with the choices we make; they defi ne the drinks we serve. It just comes down to a matter of what you choose to do. Awhile back James, his partner Anette Moldvaer, and their Square Davies, 2009 World Barista Championship (WBC) winner and owner of Present and Leather Lane in the UK. He decided to drop the host of traditional names like cappuccino, macchiato and latte, replacing them instead with simply the volume of drink being served and its ingredients. T e battle for specialty coff ee right now is to be more approachable, not more exotic. I'm guessing most of you realize that if you asked 15 people in a crowd at the mall what a cappuccino was you would get 15 diff erent answers. Heaven forbid you ask about a Gibraltar! Why confuse the matter when for the most part all we are selling is espresso and milk? We are not going so far as to only refer to it as pressure extracted coff ee and Bovine mammalian excretion, but we will be simplifying at Handsome. We serve espresso; three-, fi ve- and 10-ounce espresso and milk; and two brewed options (no choice of method). Some drinks may be served iced. T at's it— small, select and limited to what we love. STAY ON TARGET Aside from being more certain in the description, our menu is also more 78 barista magazine Mile Coff ee team decided to run a pop-up shop called Penny University in London. While many things about it were notable (no to-go cups, all coff ee prepared fresh, coff ees tied to specifi c brewing methods), the specifi c feature they implemented which we are borrowing was the choice to not off er sweeteners. Now, I can't speak on behalf of Square Mile as to why they chose to do this, but from my perspective it was challenging the typical coff ee bar hypocrisy of off ering an array of free condiments when we most oſt en despise them being used. If we truly think that we are creating a beverage with a natural sweetness that is not benefi ted by the addition of sugar and its substitutes, then it seems that off ering them at all is an action prompted mainly by fear of the customer. T at's a position we never want to be in. Once our customers buy their drinks, then, of course, they're theirs. T ey can bring in their own Splenda. T ey can take it home and doctor away. What's better yet, they will be judgment-free from us when doing so. What they will not get, however, are mixed messages from our bar where we tell them one thing and then do another in our actions. AND FOR A THIRD CHAMPION… Here we look to Tim Wendleboe of Norway, who won the WBC in 2004. Aside from our roaster, Chris Owens, going over to Oslo to soak up the genius of Tim and Tim (Varney) fi rst-person style with regards to roasting,