Mixing It Up
Blending remains taboo in specialty coffee.
Say the word and you can feel the room stiffen—how dare you muddy a prized geisha with something else? For years, we've celebrated purity: single origins, single varietals, singular stories. But as I cup hundreds of coffees each season, I find myself wondering... what if we’ve misunderstood the true potential of the cup? What if we stopped treating coffee like a solo act—and started treating it like a canvas?
A Pallet and a Plan
Our project may still be on paper, but it’s important to go through what a typical day could look like. This will give us a clearer picture, help us to avoid potential problems, and see aspects of it that we hadn’t yet considered.
Coffee delivery day. The truck pulls up.
“Bonjour monsieur, vous allez bien?”
The driver waves as we unload sacks of green coffee, the smell of jute mingling with damp stone and the hum of our little electric mini-truck. It’s a bit beat-up but it gets the job done.
This is how it starts. Not with fanfare, but with a pallet and a plan.
Art Repeats
As tools become more precise—roasting machines that hear first crack before we do, pour-over machines that mimic expert hands—we find ourselves asking: does precision diminish the craft? If the machine can do it, what’s left for the artisan?
Fertile Ground: The Invisible Garden of Workflow
Let's talk about workflow. In a coffee space—especially one centered on intentionality—workflow might be the most crucial element behind the scenes, without which nothing in front of the scenes would flow at all.
I've come to see prepping a workflow as gardening. The gardener knows that what appears above soil—the vibrant blooms, the fruit-laden branches—depends entirely on what happens beneath the surface. A gardener dedicates 90% of their effort to soil preparation, understanding that this invisible work determines everything that follows. Similarly, planning a coffee shop's workflow carries exponentially more importance than simply arranging equipment.