Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

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302 : Data's Roll in the Success of your Shop w/ Mark Calhoun and Jim Strarcev of Perfect Cube 009 : How to Approach Data and Metrics w/ Simon Ouderkirk : 330 : Establishing Systems in Your Coffee Shop 057 : SOP's FTW! Success through Standard Operating Procedures

351 : Pro Tips for Using Spreadsheets w/ Maxwell Mooney, Narrative Coffee Jun 13, 2022

Show notes

In order to have a profitable and consistent coffee shop you need to track and keep your data in order. Whether is labor, expenses, or COGs- spreadsheets are an essential tools to help you build a stable business.

On today's episode we sit down with frequent guest of the KTTS podcast, Maxwell Mooney of Narrative Coffee to talk about his top pieces of advice for using making and using spreadsheets.

Maxwell has been in coffee for well over a decade as a barista, manager, and competitor who then turned entrepreneur with the launch of Narrative Coffee. First he had a cart, then a wonderful brick and mortar, and now a second location. In these five years of operating, growing, and refining Narrative, Maxwell has been guided by his values for quality, hospitality, and community, all supported by systems.

In this conversation we cover:

Is a spreadsheet right for the job?
Tracking costs
COGs, Labor, expresses, and rent
Accounting for waste and labor in cost
Appropriate sample size for data
Projections
Taking the first step with spreadsheets

Links:

Maxwell's Spreadsheet

UpFlip Interview

www.narrative.coffee

IG: @narrative.coffee

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Sacrificing Productivity Jun 09, 2022

Show notes

It feels like we need to constantly be growing and producing something new or else we risk looking like a failure, or that we lack ambition. The idea that we always need to be expanding and taking on new things is a flawed one that often submarines our chance at finding fulfill ent fro what we do.

Today on Shift Break we will be talking about how sometimes we need to sacrifice productivity for the sake of our health and why appropriate growth is better than constant growth.

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Jonathan on IG: @jgagneastrocoffee

350 : The Physics of Filter Coffee w/ Jonathan Gagné Jun 06, 2022

Show notes

Brewing a great cup of coffee is what we all strive to do daily. Over the years, our own understanding of how to do this well has grown as the body of literature and content regarding brewing science has increased. Most recently one such resource has been published from someone who has applied their expertise and scientific rigor to the subject of brewing coffee, thus creating one of the most thorough treatments on the subject to date.

On today's show e are talking with the author of the new book, "The Physics of Filter Coffee", Jonathan Gagné !

Jonathan Gagné is a scientific advisor at the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium in Montreal, and adjunct professor at Université de Montréal. He completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics in 2015 and moved to the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. for a 3-year postdoc as a Sagan Fellow. He came back to Montreal to start a second postdoc at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets before he was hired by the Planetarium. Jonathan's expertise is focused on brown dwarfs, young stars, exoplanets, and stellar associations. He uses various telescopes throughout the world to carry his research, from the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic in Québec, the Infrared Telescope Facilities in Hawaii and Gemini-South in Chile.

In his free time, Jonathan is also passionate about coffee brewing and has dived deeply into all many aspects of how physics affect coffee preparation for pour overs and more recently espresso. He maintains a blog of his findings and understanding of coffee physics at coffeeadastra.com, and he is the author of the book The Physics of Filter Coffee.

This is a wide-ranging conversation that addresses many of the key elements that impact our brewing and how we can apply practical solutions to create wonderful coffee both at home and at at scale in the shop

We cover:

Motivation through frustrated brewing
Beginning his experimentations in coffee
Studying the most significant aspects
Relying on the community and their experience
Applied physics in how water moves through coffee
Building and refining you mental model
Accounting for the variability in coffee's behavior
Tracking your brews
What shops can do to improve extractions at scale
Different way of thinking about batch brew
Coffee freshness and extraction
Recommendation for appropriate bicarb levels in water for brewing
Recommended tools to assess your coffee quality

Links:

Jonathan's Blog : www.coffeeadastra.com

Buy the book! The Physics of Filter Coffee

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227 : Connecting with Hearts and Minds

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Up-selling and Hospitality: Helping Customers Make Good Decisions Jun 02, 2022

Show notes

How do we get customers to buy coffees they will like? This is more or less the question I was asked by a client recently in regards to bean purchases and I feel it also speaks to other decisions the coffee shop customer will make in beverage, food, etc.

Today on Shift Break I will give you the answer I gave my client on how to help customers find beans they will like. From there we will talk about my philosophy and approach on up-selling as an important feature of hospitality vs an opportunistic grab for revenue.

Related episodes:

092 : Tony "Tonx" Konecny of Yes Plz : Consumer Accessibility, roasting, 3rd wave, subscription

122 : How to be a Cash Register Hero : 6 Essential Skills Blog: Spiders and Customer Service

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https://www.kennethdavidscoffee.com

349 : Talking About 21st Century Coffee w/ Kenneth Davids May 31, 2022

Show notes

How specialty coffee has evolved, understood, and enjoyed has changed greatly over the past 50 years. Today get to talk someone whose career has not developed in parallel with the coffee industry but has been instrumental in advancing some of the best aspects of it. I'm thrilled to have bene able to sit down with the great Kenneth Davids!

Kenneth has been involved with coffee since the early 1970s and has published three books on coffee, including the influential Home Roasting: Romance and Revival, now in its second edition, and Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing and Enjoying, which has sold nearly 250,000 copies in five editions. His latest book, 21st Century Coffee: A Guide, is an unprecedentedly thorough survey of specialty coffee in all of its aspects, authoritative yet engaging.

Ken's workshops and seminars on coffee sourcing, evaluation and communication have been featured at professional coffee meetings on six continents.

He is Professor Emeritus of Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In 1996 he was awarded a Special Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Coffee Literature by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

One of our industries most influential people. Kenneth's work has shaped multiple generations of coffee enthusiasts and professionals and in this sense an hour conversation is woefully insufficient to give you even idea of the breadth and Kenneth's journey and work but here we are and I can honestly say it was true honor to speak with him and to feature his wisdom and perspectives on this show.

We cover:

Goals of his new book
The new challenges of writing about coffee
Honesty and authority of information
How Kenneth went form cafe owner to coffee writer
Mere communication vs delivering depth of understanding
Consumer community and its evolution
Starting Coffee review
The gap of accessibility and need to building the middle
What shapes consumer tastes today
Incentivizing accessible excellence
Using information to draw people in vs push away
Communicating flavor
How naturals chawed things
The hope for coffee's future

Links:

Buy Kenneth's new book!

Related episodes:

Sustainability Series #4 : Consumer 069: Hosting Consumer Coffee Classes : 7 Guidelines 035 : The Consumer Revolution w/ Kevin Sinnott 242 : A Conversation with James Hoffmann

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229 : 7 Tips for New Managers

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Doing What You Want -vs- Doing What is Needed May 26, 2022

Show notes

Management absolutely means you have the opportunity to affect change in the coffee shop. It also mean you have a responsibility to make sure the current operation is running smoothly and that the basics are taken care of. Often we favor the change over the stewardship and that is where we can get in trouble.

Today on shift break we are going to be chasing about the difference between what you want, what is needed, and how doing things in the proper order can and often does allow for both.

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226 : The Art of being Indispensable at Work w/Bruce Tulgan

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348: Founder Friday! w/ Benito Burmudez of Cafe Unido, Panama City, Panama! May 26, 2022

Show notes

It's Founder Friday! We are traveling to Panama to learn about one of the greatest cafes and roasters, Cafe Unido through a wonderful conversation with its founder, Benito Burmudez.

Inspired by the idea that Panama has some to of the world's best coffees, the first Café Unido opens its doors in 2014 in the city of Panama with a clear goal: provide a space for Panamanians to learn and appreciate coffee grown by different local producers, their distinct terroirs, regions, micro lots, varietals and processes while at the same time giving back to coffee growing regions. Over the years they evolved from a single shop, to nine stores, seven in Panama City, one in Boquete, and a new store in Washington DC.

Benito had previously opened and run a successful restaurant, Maito, prior to Unido and is also a Panama Barista Championship 2nd place finisher. Since founding the company he has been tirelessly promoting the celebration and deeper understanding of the coffees of Panama to the world.

Today we will be talking all about this journey, what has made it successful, the lessons learned, and much more...

We cover:

How Restaurant experience helped
Staying motivated through tough times
Working to win over locals to a new flavor of coffee
Being flexible and not snobbish about coffee
Training system and structure
Delegation and investing in understanding
Culture and values at scale
The biggest mistake in growing the business
Allowing for the brand's evolution and how to judge success
Exploring the depth and variety of Panama coffee
Expansion to the states

Links:

https://cafeunido.com

Instagram: @cafeunido

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