Trendsetting in Craft Coffee
Food for thought: by the time a trend catches traction in the mainstream, it’s already carrying the momentum to become a trend of the past. Nonetheless, innovation always evolves and like everything, so will craft coffee. But with craft coffee, are we innovating or just progressively improving and reintroducing things from the past? If a company doesn’t elevate and evolve its business to be parallel with the current industry trends, they’re running the risk of losing out on the opportunity to be recognized or compared to the best brands in its niche. But what if deciding to take a calculated risk and venture off course into the unknown could lead to something far more valuable and meaningful to a company, and to the industry? Ultimately leading to a new chapter, a new identity, a new wave.
A square peg in a round hole
When I was a kid, I believed I could have worked for any covert top secret federal government agency of my choosing, due to my razor blade precision when locating Waldo in all the Where’s Waldo? books. Waldo was special for one particular reason and one reason only; he always stood apart from the crowd. The reason you could find Waldo on every page, no matter the complexity, is because he was always himself, regardless of his surroundings. In essence, Waldo taught us a valuable lesson: be unique and be authentic. No matter how hard a competitor attempts to be a carbon copy imitation of your business, they will never be you. They will fizzle out eventually if they don’t find their own creative way to survive, because people more often than not, see through the bullshit and are mainly attracted to authenticity. Their business may evolve into something else along the way that will make them unique to themselves, but inevitably if they want their business to be viable, especially going into the future, they have to be their own true selves.
The future and what’s next
I don’t have a magic crystal ball, but something big is coming. The specialty coffee industry has transformed and evolved rapidly in the last 10 years. The trends are similar to that of the fashion industry, in the sense of the old returning disguised as the new. Fashion trends are revived and return to the scene revamped and modernized. Clean cut gentlemen style fashions from the Great Gatsby and greaser eras are mixed with straight blade shaves, Paul Bunyanbeards, and handle bar mustaches to become what is known today as, “Hipster”. While I’m no fashion aficionado, you get the point. Just like in fashion, a lot of trends in coffee aren’t reinventing the wheel; they are just taking a sketch of the wheel, modifying it a bit, and then calling it a hover board, which doesn’t even hover. It rolls. On wheels.
New age coffee, classic brewing methods
The pour overs, siphons, cold brews — nitro cold brews, innovations in processing and growing methods, the improvements to logistics and sourcing; all this is literally just a crunchy crumb off the loaf. Siphon coffee dates back as early as the 1840’s in France. Pour over methods date back to the early 1900’s in Germany, and cold brews, which are better known as “Kyoto-style coffee” go back as early as the 1600’s in Japan. Finally, there’s the golden goose known as espresso. The modern day espresso machine dates back to the late 1800’s where patents and legal records log its creation in Turin, Italy. From there, it started being commercially produced in the early 1900’s by La Pavoni in Milan, Italy.
Essentially, the re-introduction and implementation of these brewing methods in the specialty coffee market was crucial and monumental to its growth and to the defining of its own unique identity in the world of coffee. Throw these methods into a big melting pot with eye-catching, modern, industrial designed cafes with classic, clunky, hot rod supercharged steel coffee roasters, then add passionate, tattooed, “middle finger to the establishment” individuals, and old world, meticulous, quality-driven coffee farmers who produce mouth-watering, high-quality coffees and you have what is known as “specialty coffee”.
Time for a new approach
In our lifetime, we will see 90+ single-origin coffees being served in diners. Will donut shops be the modern day pastry shop? Serving well thought out pairings of donuts and single origin coffees? Will we see specialty coffee being served more often in restaurants? It would be really nice to see more restaurateurs and dining establishments take their coffee game up a notch. The conversation is getting louder and now even foodie publications are recognizing the lack of high quality cups of coffee being served in dining establishments. It would definitely raise the value around the business and demonstrate an attention to detail that isn’t commonly being displayed at this moment in time.
For you as a business owner, are the costs and margins that far apart that you’d rather serve a bucket of awfully torched coffee, stagnating in a percolator for days, to your customers? Obviously margins have to comply, but as a business owner, aren’t you actually out to elevate the diner’s experience in your business? Imagine in a diner, somebody can eat their hot blueberry waffles straight off the press, paired up with a creamy blueberry, brown sugar noted coffee from Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia. Dessert quality would be elevated to out-of-this-world status because of that missing ingredient that just can’t be added on the baking table. Ultimately, It would change the whole game. It’s the final flavor that will leave the perfect lasting taste in each diner’s mouth. Best of all, it displays not only to customers, but to every Tom, Dick, and Harry, that you are devoted to every detail within your business. Be great, be a trendsetter. If you’re not out to elevate and grow each day, then what’s your plan? Be like Waldo.
edited by: Taylor Glaser
