In December, I received the then-current issue of Barista magazine that featured multiple articles with local relevance, but one in particular caught my eye: "Milwaukee's Backstage Barista Project". Over several re-reads, it inspired a mix of gentle head-shaking and mild irritation. Though I wanted to respond, it seemed like opening a can of worms, and I just really didn't feel like going there. Being extremely busy with a variety of job- and family-related activities made it easy to put it aside.
When Barista magazine posted on Facebook that its new issue had been published, I made a somewhat snide remark, thus wrongly taking it out on the publication. I cited the fact that the article had highlighted John Fogerty as one of the artists who are served by the backstage baristas. I guess I just have a visceral response to the idea of Alterra providing a court barista to a Boomer musician who must be phenomenally wealthy from royalties alone. (Ever listened to the Beatles station on Pandora?) I also noted that the article listed brewing methods that aren't offered to us peons, as it were, the paying customers in the cafes. (Perhaps the backstage setup is a trying grounds for new methods.) The general impression the article left me with is that it was written chiefly to tell us how cool Alterra is, with no real mention of any product or service that would be useful to the magazine's readers.
The article dovetails with some larger issues that have been on my mind lately. At the time, I wrote that service industry companies should think that serving paying customers is the coolest thing in the world. Of course, the article is what inspired that comment. That's not just sniping from me--I honestly, really and truly believe that they must do so for their own success in the long run. That long run will involve serving a customer base who will exist in a different financial reality than the current base. The key point is not whether or not they will pay $3, $4 or even $5 for a coffee drink (or whatever price inflation may dictate in the future) but that their discretionary spending pie will be dramatically smaller. It's hard to conceive of any scenario in which it won't be. Recession aside, we have allowed our political system to settle back into gridlock, which means that health care reform will probably die and out-of-pocket costs will continue to explode. Oh boy, I really didn't want to let this turn into a long-winded lecture--honest!
To make a long story short, at some point, the specialty coffee narrative will have to be developed in a way that is coherent and sold to the generation of people who are entering the prime of their lives (at least that's how I like to think of it). When the Boomers retire--which is, you know, soon--the last generation of pensioned workers will have left the workforce, along with virtually all those involved in any sort of non-automotive manufacturing in this country. If the service industry is running a marathon rather than a sprint--and I do hope it is--adjusting to a reality that is coming sooner than any of us want to think about is imperative.
Whew! Speaking of long-winded, I'm winded from just writing this. See why I didn't want to open this can of worms?
