Author: liza maksimova

  More and more specialty coffee places are opening their doors around the world, having different business models. One thing is true. Slowly but surely it is becoming clear that to sell specialty coffee successfully you need to have workers who are not only passionate about the product, but also qualified and have some education … Continue reading #65 – “One for all”: does having the barista who works for 3 does the trick

Is it possible to serve specialty without knowing why and how to adjust the grinder?         It will be sort of a compilation of thoughts that I got after having some conversations this week.     Here in Portugal, in Lisbon, the situation regarding Specialty Scene is coming to a point when … Continue reading #63 – Is it possible: to serve specialty with no training in it?

  Call this whatever you want – betrayal of the ideals of the specialty coffee community, lack of passion, just overally evil temper – but I will be shamelessly honest with you (as I  have always been doing here, anyway).    It just mesmerizes me HOW specialty coffee enters new markets. And it is an … Continue reading #62 – How Specialty Coffee enters new markets

  I suppose nobody will have any objections, if this time I will be writing about everything, and about nothing at the same time (but all coffee-related, surely). And in case somebody is against it – just don’t read 🙂   I got my right hand hurt somehow, an inflamation of the tissues, and I … Continue reading #61 – Coffee Notes: misc pt.1

(leer en español) I would like to talk here, or to start talking, it is better, let’s put it like that – start talking about what was in my head for a while last couple of weeks. To share with you, and to initiate that conversation.   It is not gonna be the tips about … Continue reading #60 – Specialty Coffee: all the information is here. What are you gonna do next?

  Before going around Lisbon Specialty places I was living in an oblivion regarding cappuccino, being honest.   I wrote about lattes, because I stopped seeing any point in them. It was not something from the outside that I witnessed. It was actually making barista shifts, and getting to that conclusion. I made the point … Continue reading #59 – Cappuccino: lost and forgotten

  When I was a kid, one of my favourite books was the book called “Bad Advices”, basically a reverse psychology for kids :), where the author was giving ideas of how to do the craziest things that will annoy your parents the most – for example, to throw away your breakfast from the window, … Continue reading #58 – “Bad Advices”: tips how to make your cupping meaningless

  Some time ago, probably even a year ago, I wrote a post about serving specialty coffee in a country with high consumption of robusta, like Portugal is. And now, the time passed, and like with any other thing, I think the moment came to repeat it, at the new level. The scene grew immensly … Continue reading #57 – Serving Specialty Coffee in Portugal Vl.2 – short marketing intervention

(Leer en español) When I just entered coffee world,  and I will not call it specialty coffee world, because it was, as I see now, commodity coffee – I did not know anything about varieties, origins, and processings. And I was exploring. So I could easily try Sumatra coffee, or Indian Monsoon Malabar, or Jamaica … Continue reading #56 – And now seriously… Do we even come to evaluate the taste of coffee?

Specialty community has some ideas that I wouldn’t say I agree with.   And “educating the customers” is definitely one of them.   Every time I hear from somebody in Specialty that our goal is to “educate the customers” I know with 100% of certainty that this person is not seeing the scene wide enough. … Continue reading #55 – “We don’t need no education” – or why the desire to “educate” your customer is simply rude

  It is funny how things are interconnected, and topics are almost floating in the air. You can almost believe that they are out there, in the common space, and anybody can just reach out and… I was getting to one topic today, due to the complex combination of events and thoughts about those events, … Continue reading #54 – Finding your own voice as a Specialty Coffee Shop