Espresso Excellence Class

Not so long ago our Regional Coffee Masters suggested to run an Espresso Excellence class as part of a regional strategy to improve the quality of the beverage. It combines some of the fundamentals of bar with tactics for winning customer service. Aiste and Charlotte did the class with us, District Coffee Masters first and then we were suppose to roll out the class with our SCMs and after that, we would do it on the regular basis with all new recruits or people who just kinda lost their bearings and needed re-focus.

Because we had to do some exercises in real cafe setting and because in my district all the shops are open 7 days a week, Zita of Victoria District suggested we went to Palmers Street store, which is closed on weekends.

It was Saturday morning and being primarily an office area, the streets around Victoria Station were dead. The trails of ducks crossed  the sky. Air was cool and crisp. Daffodils nodded their sleepy heads in unison with early breeze.
 We had a fun class and having spoken with few SCMs after that, I think, everyone enjoyed rather unusual format of the meeting. Now, I need to be pretty inventive with the agenda for the next meeting.  

 

Coffee and cigarettes

They talked. They talked about everything, anything really, and about nothing in particular. They argued, made friends, went around minding their own business. They smoked. A lot. And they drunk coffee.

This is "Coffee and cigarettes"'s very brief plot, that doesn't do this film any justice. You have to watch it. It was released about 1999 and is quite rare in the shops - too art-housey, or plain boring. Director - Jim Jarmush, and if I am not mistaken, he also wrote a script - jigsaw puzzle of unconnected events, happening around smoking and drinking coffee. It is not the action packed thriller, that keeps you glued to the screen and you'll need a lot of coffee to get through. Sometimes even, it seems like the movie is telling you: "Go on, this is your chance, switch off! Or switch to the snooker championship re-run." However, you need to persist and stick with it.

I fall in love with this movie in Moscow, it was very early morning screening in huge cinema in MDM Palace, Metro Frunzenskaya, and for me, unspoilt by the wonders of civilization girl from the industrial suburbs, the mirrored bar, the spacious foyer, the velour armchairs, shaped as balls and hugging you with their soft edges - seemed an absolut of sophistication, triumph of engineering thought.  There were, probably, about another couple of nut cases in the cinema, apart form myself and my friend Stepanka. The movie started without sound, in black and white, with Russian subtitles. All this things made a profound impression on me and I mentally prepared myself for the master-class in art-house cinema. After 15 min the operated realized that he forgot to put the sound on! Honestly, I was a bit dissappointed. Also, in Russia all the foreign language movies are dubbed with snotty monotonous voice-over of a guy, that has been smoking illegal substances for 15 years non-stop, or else he sounds like he did. We are not used to subtitles in Russia.

Anyway, I recommend everyone to see this film, it has great camera work, music score and that delicious pointlessness that marks many of Jarmush's works - just the excuse to curl up on the sofa with a huge jar of coffee.
    

St. John's Wood Re-Opening

After few weeks of painful refurbishment and being closed from the noon everyday, eventually, we arrived at the end of our journey and store was re-opened today. The transformation is amazing - the new lighter palette of the colors and indie coffee house feel.
I especially liked the new furniture - dark and classy - and big prints on the walls.
The team was wearing orange T shirts and had Aroma Lab on and some contests for customers.

 

Flat White's come back!

These days we sell a lot of flat whites, the drink that started as a whimsy is rapidly becoming very popular among  the customers - there is even a particular breed of them, asking a cappuccino or latte "like a flat white" - creamy and dreamy. It served as a pivotal point in a history of coffee making and revolutionized the way we see espresso-based beverages forever.

As the initial training went down in January there are now some new people in town who missed that - and we came up with the idea  to run the classes on regular basis. Today myself, Store Coffee Master from 34 Edgware Rd. store Emma and Malik, manager from aforementioned store did 4 classes. In. A. Row.
It was coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!

We have met some brilliant people and have bags of fun.
Here are couple of pictures, unfortunately, my camera's batteries have gone and I couldn't do more.  Shame.

Happy Easter!

Great timing for the post congratulating with Easter, when Easter Monday is almost over, but as you all know - good things come to those, who wait! ;-)

I hope everyone had nice Easter and ate a lot of eggs.
I was so inspired by blossoms and about 15 consecutive minutes of sunshine, that I went and wrote few haiku. (For all the purists out there - mine are can only loosely called haiku; for those who are not familiar with this poetical genre - have a look at haikuguy.com).

Hello, sun!
Hello, sun! - little birdies
Crying.

Sun is shining.

Weather is sweet.
Guardian unopend.

Weeping willow
Dressed in green, rivels
Cherry blossoms.

Silly fun

One of my Store Coffee Masters send this link to me. I thought it was very funny and rather silly fun. The main character, girl in fishnets, called Sarah, wrote the lyrics for this masterpiece which in my opinion are brilliant and expanding the boundaries of literary excellence. She also wrote that she was obsessed with Starbucks for a while and "had a good fortune of being hired by the company". In my current situation I can only be envious of such enthusiasm.

Here it is. Watch it, dance to it, sing along!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MZ_DU1lKEc

Paris, Paris, Paris!

Having lived in London for a while I have developed some stereotypes and prejudices which is never good, but saves a lot of time – I never trust BBC weather forecast, I don’t read Dan Brown and I don’t believe in sky without at least one tiny cloud.

However, this type of sky exists! I got a proof in Paris last week. It was just surreal – bottomless blue void and nothing to hold on to, the merciless sunshine that I thought was only possible in Jerusalem, burning the ancient remains and balding heads of the local sages.
But, my, oh my, how freezing it was! Bitter wind blew from the river, making us seek shelter in many cafes and brasseries, where we were served cafe au lait or later Americanos for me and cappuccinos for Ash, because we got corrupted by Starbuck’s cup sizes and coffee brought in egg cups wasn’t quite enough. Majority of people though stayed outside, on lined along the cafes tables and wicker chairs, sipping their espressos, smoking and lazing on the sun.

We also discovered chocolate viennoise, which is just a hot chocolate with cream. And chocolate africain from Angelina. The place looked so snob from outside that we had some doubts before entering it, but I am happy we did. It was very welcoming and stuff greeted us like their cousins returning from travels down basin of Amazonia. The cafe itself certainly looks grand with golden carvings, huge mirrors and chandelliers – it feels like Louis XVI’S palace. The sweets display is a stuff of a dream – giant jars full of macaroons of every colour imaginable – pistachio, orange, pink, black, little wonders of culinary, so sophisticated and artful that it seems a crime to eat them.
The chocolate africain was brought to us in a little milk jar with whipped cream separately, so thick and syrupy, and full of flavour, I am sure they milked the most gracious and serene cows to produce this quality cream and cracked the cocoa beans worth their weight in gold to make chocolate so delicious.

We also ordered Montblanc – desert which recipe is kept secret for over hundred years – it tasted divine but totally unusual. Only after buying a marron spread (chestnut) and trying it at home, it downed on me, that this Monblanc is simply the chectnut flavoured pastry filled with whipped cream rested on most delicate, most fragile meringue. Oops, I told you the secret!
I don’t know why we needed desert at all as the calories we consumed with hot chocolate would be enough to sustain us on our attempt to swim across the Channel. To be honest, this stuff has to be taken in moderation – it is like caviar or my beloved fois gras – after few spoonfuls it just becomes too much and you understand that this things designed to be savoured slowly and in homeopathical dozes.

Coffee was very good everywhere we went – even at the hotel where I suspect they brew the filter. Paris certainly lived up to the expectations, but also shocked with its astronomical prices. Get saving, fellas! Having said that, the best things in Paris are stil free – the smell of fresh oysters on a bed of ice displayed on a street market, insanely tasty baguettes, the regularity of Jardin de Luxemburg, the sight of the city sprawled below from the Sacre Couer’s Dome, the iron-wrought balconies and views of Eiffel Tower at dawn.