To our beloved customers –An introduction to Barefoot 4.0
As you probably already know, the Barefoot Cafe is planning to introduce a new menu. We have been doing a lot of talking, philosophizing, analyzing, researching, deliberating, debating, questioning and thinking about what Barefoot is all about. The answer we came up with after nearly a year? Coffee. Barefoot Coffee. Serious Coffee. Coffee, coffee, beautiful wonderful incredibly tasty coffee.
What is Barefoot coffee? Our super talented and skilled roasting team strives to roast to have the coffee taste of “terroir” - French for “taste of the earth”. Unlike other coffee roasters with a “signature roast” Barefoot Coffee Roasters tries to reveal the unique flavor of each coffee that is created through the magical combination of soil, sun, water, coffee species and varietal, weather, and processing method. Coffee is a very complex beverage, with over 800 chemicals composing the flavor, as opposed to wine’s 400. Coffee is a fruit, it is produce – a magical cherry that is highly perishable – even the seed that we call a “coffee bean” and roast and brew and drink loses it’s flavor and quality much quicker than chocolate, tea, or yerba mate.
What is serious coffee? It is small, intense, complex and beautiful. It is high quality, made by hand, with great concern for the origin and processing of all the ingredients used. It is ethical, it is environmental, it is sustainable, it is delicious. It is a culinary art. It is a science and a craft. It is the core of what Barefoot is and what we all share a common love for. Serious Barefoot coffee is what we do best, and we are narrowing our focus to do what we do best in order to do it even better. In order to improve upon our quality, speed, and service we are making many changes, including
Major Changes:
1. Strauss Family Creamery milk. Amazing milk from the first certified organic dairy west of the Mississippi. Strauss cows are mostly grass fed and spend much of the year feeding on real fresh green pasture. Much of the rest of the feed is grown by Strauss itself. The rest of the feed used is tested for GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) contamination – an unmatched step in the dairy industry that exceeds USDA organic standards and ensures a truly organic product. 2. Guittard chocolate – outstanding chocolate from one of America’s few remaining independent chocolatiers, 3. One size per drink. There will be no “Big” 20oz size for espresso based drinks. 4. Price corrections and increases. Some menu items will remain the same, others will increase some. 5. No commercial syrups or additives. We are going start making many more ingredients in house including ginger and whipped cream (Strauss of course), and upgrading the quality of many others including sugar and vanilla. 6. The price range of drinks will remain the same as other cafes – between 2 and 5 dollars a drink. 7. All French presses will be served only for here in real cups to guarantee both the quality and your enjoyment.
One Size For Every Drink (or why we won’t have a “Big” size anymore):
1. More really incredible Barefoot Coffee flavor – you can taste the coffee – you can taste the earth from which it came. The best and most astounding flavors of blueberry, caramel, and honey come not from a bottle of syrup but are actually present in the actual pure coffee that is properly grown, picked, processed, stored, transported, roasted, and extracted with close attention to quality at every step of the process. 2. Higher quality – each drink is designed to be the epitome of perfection, balance, and proper proportions. 3. Very high quality and high cost Strauss Milk makes larger sizes prohibitively expensive. 4. Barefoot Coffee Roasters won’t have “venti” or “grande” espresso drinks because our medium roasted naturally sweet coffee doesn’t have the burnt, charcoal taste to cut through 20 oz of milk and flavoring. 5. Every drink is handmade in a time consuming process including steaming each drink in it’s own individual pitcher using fresh milk and each shot of espresso is made by hand by a skilled professional barista. 6. Better latte art. 7. Half the calories. 8. Takes much less time to make. 9. Barefoot is going the reverse direction of our “competition” – we are downsizing our drinks to what once was considered to be reasonable sizes before the rise of fast food and supersizing.
Our goal is to provide you with an extraordinarily exceptional quality of coffee and milk, fantastic service, amazing speed, and ethical and environmentally sustainable products at a very fair price. In an age of mass produced factory farmed junk food cloaked with a facade of marketing claims about quality and value we instead offer you amazingly awesome hand crafted naturally farmed ethical and sustainable coffee & milk drinks and real quality and value. Taste is the test and the proof is in the cup. Thank you awesome BCR patrons!
Love,
Barefoot Coffee
Post Script: Have any questions, concerns, complaints, comments, feedback? Please send to Paul@BarefootCoffeeRoasters.om PostPostScript:BCR4.0 launches next Monday, but look for a special early introduction to Strauss Family Creamery Thursday!
9. Barefoot is going the reverse direction of our “competition” – we are downsizing our drinks to what once was considered to be reasonable sizes before the rise of fast food and supersizing. !
Sweet! I think there's a place for a somewhat 'Soup-Nazi'-ish approach to selling coffees (not that you guys are doing that).
"No, you don't want that, you want THIS. Here, try it...Uh-huh, I thought so, we'll see you tomorrow, same time, same place. "
Seriously, people can request all the foo-foo drinks they want; I've never had someone say they'd prefer their usual brew over what I pull with my modest equipment at home. You guys pull some of the best shots around, and have the rest dialed in. I smell success.
Hey, you can even build a reputation on this unremitting standard of quality*: "don't like it? There's 271 Starbucks within 50 miles of here, and a door 20 feet away. "
I've spoken many times about my stop in at Barefoot before I headed back to Tucson. I had split San Francisco the evening before, to escape the city traffic and spend the night in a moderately priced hotel. This is what I told everyone else, my real reason was to be able to leave the highway and have a doppio that evening and get up to a doppio for breakfast and a capp to go for the road!. I ordered a double 1% cappuccino and a doppio to go. The person taking my order let me know that I may not be able to get the doppio in anything but ceramic. I musta Nippered, because she started to explain that most of their to go paper cups for shots weren't making it farther than the garbage can just outside the cafe door, and that they did want to gently push folk into taking a minute to enjoy the coffee, not just shoot it as they walked out. She didn't, however, notice the light that went on and replaced that Nipper look. I did get the capp to go, and I did get the doppio in ceramic, with pretty much the same admonishment from the barista as I got from the cashier. I'd encourage anyone to get ceramic if you can. I've taken to bringing my own cup to cafe's and letting them make the drink in that (some want to, some won't, I don't fight with 'em, but if they 'can't', I just pour it into my cup while they watch me at the counter). All that being said, if I were to be traveling through again (BF has easy highway access!), would you put two drinks in one cup for me? If I wanted two double capps worth of great capp to go, is there a twelve or sixteen ounce cup I could get that in?
It must be nice to have enough business to be able to do what you guys are doing. It's totally what we would do if we could get away with it. Unfortunately, we've had to take baby steps towards that goal, but we do at least go out of our way to make FrouFrou drinks with as real ingredients as possible.
Congratulations on the success, and especially to the future.
Sweet! I think there's a place for a somewhat 'Soup-Nazi'-ish approach to selling coffees (not that you guys are doing that).
"No, you don't want that, you want THIS. Here, try it...Uh-huh, I thought so, we'll see you tomorrow, same time, same place. "
Seriously, people can request all the foo-foo drinks they want; I've never had someone say they'd prefer their usual brew over what I pull with my modest equipment at home. You guys pull some of the best shots around, and have the rest dialed in. I smell success.
Hey, you can even build a reputation on this unremitting standard of quality*: "don't like it? There's 271 Starbucks within 50 miles of here, and a door 20 feet away. "
The Soup Nazi has been an influence on my thinking. It was a great portrayal of how a business could have absolutely terrible service and still thrive based solely upon the brilliant quality of it's product. It got me thinking a long time ago what could be possible through service that matched the product.
Barefoot previously had the largest menu of any cafe I've ever seen or heard of, quite possibly the most complicated in the entire world. There were three main menus, one was a legacy menu from the three failed coffeeshops that rotated through the same space, one was similar to the "competition" across the street, and one was Barefoot. We are stripping away the first two leaving only the 'Foot remaining. This will lead to greatly improved quality, speed, and service. Previously it was very difficult to get people to try something new and different and better, take away the choice of what they are used to and they will gladly get something else.
The choice is now much simpler - small and excellent at Barefoot, or large and not so excellent somewhere else, for the same price. Real value or value marketing? Strauss organic grass fed GMO free milk or a cup of growth hormones, antibiotics, GMO feed, maybe a little E. Coli sprinkled on top?
I'm sure the choice is obvious to the Coffeegeek community. Since Barefoot is a destination spot with a "terrible location" (I love it so much!) all of our customers have chosen us because they prefer something better and different than the 'competition', so I believe they will be able to make the right choice quite easily. Those who balk at change (it's human nature, we all do so) then will very likely come back after trying to go back to what they had once considered to be "good".
All that being said, if I were to be traveling through again (BF has easy highway access!), would you put two drinks in one cup for me? If I wanted two double capps worth of great capp to go, is there a twelve or sixteen ounce cup I could get that in?
I hate to say no. I cringe at the thought of denying a person the drink they want. But no, we won't do that. It's not possible to put two cappuccinos in one cup, you end up with a latte. I've been wondering lately whether it is even possible to make a cappuccino in a paper cup. I think it isn't because of the paper, it affects the flavor and paper isn't an ingredient in a cappuccino.
We will be able to make you a quad shot 12 oz dry latte. You could also buy two cappuccinos and pour them both into your cup or one paper cup. We refuse to serve the espresso to go, but we don't tell people they can ask for a paper cup. If you pay for it then you may do with it what you want, but I advise strongly against it.
I advise you to instead to order two cappuccinos in ceramic mugs and drink them one at a time slowly sipping forgetting that there is easy highway access right out the door. Forget everything but the coffee while you drink it. Escape from reality and your rushed, harried life and relax. One cappuccino enjoyed in this manner will most likely bring you far more pleasure than two in your car.
It must be nice to have enough business to be able to do what you guys are doing. It's totally what we would do if we could get away with it. Unfortunately, we've had to take baby steps towards that goal, but we do at least go out of our way to make FrouFrou drinks with as real ingredients as possible.
Congratulations on the success, and especially to the future.
We do have a very big advantage with our location, stripmall next to a major highway, major expressway (or espressoway), and major blvd, with lots of parking. Millions of people drive by everyday so we will never be lacking customers so long as we remain Barefoot.
I still haven't made it up to JavaJ's so I know nothing of your store or market, but I humbly suggest changing your perspective from "wishing we could get away with it" to "how do we make this happen?" - it took me many months of research and analysis before I realized exactly how and why 16oz and 20oz drinks are not just not necessary, but are actually a burden. We won't be getting away with anything, we will be giving the best quality ingredients prepared in the best way and charging a low, low, low price for it.
I believe it is possible - you can reach your dream menu - if you have the location, staff, customers, product quality, and determination. Once you have a solid reputation established it may be easier to change than you think - at least with Barefoot our customers are extremely flexible once you take the choice away from them. I think one of the most dangerous hazards of any business, particularly coffee, is letting your customer expectations define your reality. Reality can often be shaped by pure belief, and it is a hard battle, but I believe the individual who believes in quality can create a reality that conflicts with the masses who believe in quantity.
I'll try to make up your way by the end of the year. Time for another coffee tour/road trip!
Paul told me that it takes 20 seconds longer to steam venti size milk drinks. With those supersize drinks gone they will be able to make lattes and cappas much faster so the line will move fast and I'll get to enjoy beauties like these ristrettos faster. Sounds like Barefoot is doing the Vivace thing.
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