January 13, 2017

Deepening our relationship with George Howell

I keep wondering how can we do this better? Our coffee is really beautiful. We’re so careful with it. And it’s helped us develop a reputation in the City of Boston. I taste coffee everywhere I go and our cup is really head-to-head with anything anywhere, which is something we’re really proud of. A lot of this has to do with the amazing roasters we work with.

But I keep thinking it could be better. What would it look like if we were selling 2x the coffee we sell now? What would be different? How would we do that?

The other day I was thinking back to the early days when we only used one coffee. It was from Casa Ruiz, in Panama. And it was a “Vienna Roast,” which means sort of dark but not too dark. (And as far as Vienna Roast goes it was on the light side.) We had to stop serving that coffee because some larger companies bought out all of their supply. But it was an awesome stepping stone for people and a really great introduction to estate coffee for folks who otherwise might be familiar with Dunkin or Starbucks. Maybe we should go back to a coffee like this? I’m wondering if too many of our coffees right now are overly acidic.

I’m also thinking we might move our coffee to 22g pour (currently 25g). I’ve tried this in the past and failed. But I still think it’s better. And maybe it’s worth another go.

And we’ve started doing a coffee training class. So we were talking to George about collaborating on the future of training. The classes will likely be open to the public. So stay tuned. Could be amazing.

And we discussed how to streamline equipment calibration/ maintenance.

And, “gasp,” whether we’d consider a Fetco machine at a location (not pour over). Specifically, we were talking about CloverBUR where I’m not sure people get the pour over thing.

That’s me, with George Howell, Chris (VP of Food at Clover), Martina (New Recipe Development at Clover), Rebecca (GH), Janet (GH). We’re going to be trying a bunch of stuff and working with support from these guys.

If you were in charge, what improvements would you make?

Look for a lot of testing of different coffee-related stuff. I’m going to launch some customer research around this too. If you’re interested in helping us please mention to your Clover Guide next time you’re in.

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