I wasn’t late but I was in a reasonable hurry. On an LA excursion to meet up with friends for a drive, I made the very necessary coffee stop. I popped into a well-known specialty coffee spot—aside from a couple sitting at a two-top who already had their beverages the store was empty. Prefect.
After being left hanging at the register for an oddly long time I placed my order: cappuccino, espresso, Pellegrino, Fifteen dollars. Our drink wait time benchmark at Cat & Cloud is 1-3 minutes so I figured I’d be out of there in five minutes max.
Five minutes came and went and still no drinks. The barista was slowly making beverages but nothing came my way. Then I saw it: a ticket holder with a row of tickets at least ten deep. Mobile orders. I was in an incredibly busy cafe disguised as an empty cafe.
I had to bail. I ran (literally) down the street into a Starbucks around the corner, ordered a short coffee, then clumsily jogged to the hotel spilling coffee on my hand the whole way, and made it just in time to jump in the car with my friend and make our meetup time.
I understand the attraction of mobile ordering. My main beef with it is it deprioritizes the people who are physically in your store. If someone cares enough to walk down the street and through our doors, they should get priority.
Over time, businesses attract a customer base who values what they value. While speed of service and quality can coexist, a space that prioritizes creating experiences and building connections is different than a space that prioritizes convenience. With every decision we make as a business, it’s worth asking:
Who do we want to be?
Who do we want to serve?
Last week a guest brought in their personal mug to get coffee. After handing it off, our team member fumbled and dropped the mug which shattered into pieces.
Without missing a beat, our team member apologized and grabbed one of our custom mugs (which we sell for $32) from the merch shelf, filled it with coffee and said “Here’s your new mug!”
This is an example of what we call Power To Please. If anything goes awry, our team members are empowered to fix it with a solution they deem appropriate. No need to ask a manager or owner—just make it right.
We’re not worried about people giving away too much. Most people have a solid intuition on what’s appropriate. A simple gut check is to ask yourself: “If I were the guest, what would make me feel taken care of?”
From a mathematical perspective $32 is nothing compared to the lifetime value of a guest. Despite making “business sense” , empowering people to delight our guests isn’t about engaging in a transactional relationship, it’s about creating a remarkable experience. We want people to feel taken care of whether they're a regular or a one-time visitor.
SOPs and checklists provide operational consistency but there’s no way to script an “if this, then that” matrix for every single thing that might happen in a dynamic retail environment. To provide the ultimate experience, we need to have a script while also creating space to improv.
Every vision we act upon puts us on a path from Here to There.
But on the way from Here to There, our desires evolve. No matter how far we go, what we thought would make us fulfilled feels just as far away as when we started.
In 2006 I was in Portland for a Barista competition and saw Kyle, the Stumptown barista trainer standing outside their Belmont cafe which was right next door to the Annex, their public-facing cupping room and coffee tasting bar. He was leaning against the building smoking a cigarette with one foot propped up on the wall. He looked like the James Dean of Specialty Coffee.
I asked him what he was doing, and he said he’d just finished a staff training and in a half hour he was going back in to lead a wholesale training. At that moment I knew that if I could have a job like that, I’d be happy for the rest of my life. Almost 20 years later, still working in the same industry, my dreams look different.
As I get older I'm becoming more convinced that There doesn’t exist. Our life is comprised of perpetual Here’s. We’re not on a static path, we’re on an ever-evolving treadmill. And yes, short-term sacrifice for long-term gain is part of the program, but if our never-ending Here isn’t bringing us any joy it’s worth considering we might be on the wrong treadmill.
Rewards come in many forms: monetary, autonomy, notoriety, etc. If we’re self-aware enough to put ourselves on the right treadmill, doing the work day in and day out becomes a reward in and of itself.
Yesterday I asked our Marketing Coordinator why she enjoys her work, and she responded with three clear, concise reasons.
My work is Creative. I’m often doing something I’ve never done before.
My work is in the Service of other people. I get to connect with and make other people's lives better.
I enjoy creating Strategy. Figuring out what our guests expect and how to meet those expectations is engaging.
She beautifully articulated three pillars of a job worth having. I’d make a personal edit and say Curiosity fits her explanation better than Strategy.
Creativity. Service. Curiosity.
It’s notable that none of these things are specific to her job. No matter what our work is, we can choose to engage with these ideas—the job we have isn’t as important as the story we tell ourselves about that job.
I thanked her for writing this week's blog for me and here we are.
“Scale and ubiquity creates complexity. Complexity demands efficiency. But we are in a business where that touch point between the customer and the barista has to be protected and has to be elevated…Starbucks demands nurturance. It’s a company that has to be nurtured like a young child. That is an anomaly, inconsistent with scale.”
This is pulled from a great interview with Howard Schultz (find it here). This push/pull theme is the golden thread woven throughout the interview. On one end you have an inspiring vision of workplace culture, craftsmanship, and guest experience. On the other, you have scale at all costs.
Every micro-story shares traits with the macro-story. Case study: the Frappuccino
Starbucks acquires the business that created and held the trademark for the Frappuccino
Schultz dislikes it: “I didn’t like the name. I didn’t like the beverage. I didn’t think it was appropriate for Starbucks.”
Schultz bottles the Frappuccino for the mass market in a joint venture with Pepsi
Listening to Howard is inspiring. There are sections of his dialogue that would fit right into a Cat & Cloud meeting. His vision is not so different from ours, but the reality of Starbucks and Cat & Cloud are completely different.
This interview reminds me that every step along our journey we have choices to make, each with an opportunity cost. Who do we want to be? Who do we want to serve? What are the markers of success for us? The tension between what Starbucks is and Howard Schultz’s vision is almost painful to listen to. It seems that a more peaceful way to live might be to:
Be honest with ourselves about what we truly value
Build our brand promise around those values
Enjoy our success tension-free
Note: I can't recommend this episode enough. Great stories, interesting cultural perspective, and an incredible behind-the-scenes look at how one of America's (then the world's) most ubiquitous brands was built.Acquired Podcast. Starbucks, With Howard Schultz
The most common compliment I receive about Cat & Cloud is some version of “Your staff is the best!” It’s funny that even the guests who have been coming in for years saying the best thing about Cat & Cloud is the people, hardly notice those “best people” are consistently changing.
It’s easy to get sucked into believing that there are a finite number of amazing people, but our experience tells us otherwise. We used to see all turnover as a negative, and too much too fast is. But the reality of a business like ours is twofold:
1. We have many people on staff who are entering the workforce for the first time. They resonate with our culture, crave learning, and do great work, but they also have their own passions and life plans. If people can come, contribute, and leave with a bag of skills that helps them thrive and get where they want to go, that's a win.
2. Even if everyone wanted to make Cat & Cloud their forever home, we can’t possibly grow fast enough to perpetually provide long-term career opportunities for everyone on staff. We also don’t see this as a negative. In most entry-level jobs you're choosing your work based more on culture, workplace experience, and learning opportunities than long-term earning potential. (I would've taken Cat & Cloud over my first job at McDonalds if it were an option.)
Strong leadership is a necessity, but the cult of personality is a trap. The cult of culture is freedom.
Professionals
Do their best work even when they’re not having their best day because people are counting on them
Take ownership of their actions—they make mistakes but not excuses
Seek to serve others rather than seeking fame for themselves
Understand that their reputation follows them wherever they go
Know that imperfect actions are better than perfect ideas
Act with integrity on and off the clock
Don’t gossip
Take responsibility for their growth
Never stop learning
Build their organizations and team up, not tear them down
Over-deliver every time
Share what they've learned and pay it forward
Crush the job they have even when it’s not the job they want
If you can check off these boxes you’ll be an asset wherever you are and build a reputation with limitless potential. Apply these with consistency and in time, any job you want is yours.
Even the best actors will only churn out a mediocre movie without a solid director.
The director holds the vision and works to bring out the best in the actors. Actors sign on because they believe in the project and want to be a part of it (they’ve likely turned down other roles to accept this one).
You won’t see Christopher Nolan in Oppenheimer, but his fingerprints are all over it. Ideally, you’re so immersed in the story that you don’t even think about the director—you’re thinking about how the movie makes you feel.
If the movie flops, we blame the director. If the movie does well, the actors get most of the shine.
I can’t think of a better analogy for running our company.
You likely won’t find the owners on the floor, but our ideas are everywhere. Our work is holding and communicating the vision, getting the right people on the team, and creating an environment where they can do their best work.
Employees aren’t here because they have to be but because they want to be (working might be a necessity, but every Cat & Cloud team member could easily get any number of other jobs).
If the business fails, it’s on us. But our guests rarely think about us. They know our team members (the stars) and keep showing up because they love how going to Cat & Cloud makes them feel.
This is the essence of leadership. It’s not about physically being front and center. It’s about imbuing ideas with meaning and facilitating bringing them to life by creating an environment that empowers the contributions of others—all in service of your guests, customers, or clients.
“Clean the toilet because it’s part of your job.”
“The lasting impression people take away from any experience is the sum total of everything they see, hear, smell, touch, and feel, both consciously and subconsciously. Any slice of the experience should reflect our mission of creating memorable moments for our guests. Making sure the restroom is dialed is part of this.”
When we understand and resonate with the meaning behind our tasks, even the sh*ttiest ones feel more bearable.
You’re cleaning the toilet either way. Which toilet would you rather clean?
One of our secret weapons at Cat & Cloud is tapping into the creativity and inspiration of our team members. From seasonal beverages and new menu items to green coffee buying decisions, some of our most popular creations have come from the minds of our team.
But just an idea isn't enough. Ideas are easy. Bringing them to life is the hard part. Have an idea for a new menu item? Sweet. You’re on the hook for finding vendors, costing out ingredients, and making sure they fit within our margin and pricing structure. You take the lead on dialing in the workflow—how does this integrate into an already humming kitchen? Everything has to make sense both culturally and monetarily.
We've set this standard and people repeatedly rise to the occasion. When you pave the way with your mission and values and pair the right level of autonomy with the right level of responsibility, you’ll be amazed at what your team is capable of.
As an independent company, we spend what we make and keep a watchful eye on our P&L and cash position. Wants are plenty—on any given day, we could find no less than 20 things we’d like to update in each department. Add all those up and we’d run up a tab we couldn't possibly pay. This seems to be the case no matter how much we grow, our appetite is always bigger than our stomach.
Instead of allocating a paltry amount of money to each department for CapEx, we have a quarterly allocation of a larger lump sum shared company-wide. If the retail department uses $10K for something, that's $10K that the marketing, roastery, or partner program departments don’t have access to.
This shared budget approach means every large CapEx allocation involves a discussion with our leadership team to decide where the money will go. The ongoing dialogue about the health and needs of each department drives interdepartmental cooperation, fosters ownership, and connects each department's actions to the bigger picture better than a siloed culture of “I have to protect my money and spend my full budget or I won't get it next year.”
Our departments aren't in competition with each other. We’re not playing a zero-sum game. The goal of any expenditure is to drive our mission forward. If the money gets allocated to the highest-level organizational need, everyone wins.
In a brick-and-mortar setting, the size of your business limits the number of people you interact with, but it doesn’t limit the depth or value of those interactions. Every interaction is with an individual, and it's unlikely that any given individual cares whether your annual revenue is $1 million or $30 million, or whether you have one location or ten.
Thoughtful service from a caring professional is (unfortunately) so rare that if you consistently delight your guests, partners, and employees, you’ll undoubtedly carve out a special place in people’s hearts and essentially become irreplaceable. I could live without Starbucks and Round Table Pizza. But if my favorite local coffee shop or pizza joint closed I’d be bummed.
It’s problematic to believe that the size of your business dictates its significance. Most of us will never be anything close to famous. Does that mean our lives don’t matter? Of course not. The same is true for our businesses and projects. Making a huge difference for a small number of people is a worthwhile pursuit.
The trope of the snotty barista is dead. The same goes for the uppity bartender or chef. Even the famed soup-nazi from Seinfeld is out of business.
When we separate our craft from the people we hope to serve, we trick ourselves into believing our craft can stand alone. But even the most responsibly sourced, perfectly prepared coffee in the world can’t save us from not saying hello when people walk through the door, missing small order details, forgetting our regulars names, or having no sense of urgency. I've been fortunate enough to dine at several 3 Michelin Star restaurants, and even at those, where the ingredients and preparation techniques are world-class, the service and human interaction leave the biggest impression.
In our stores, we use a triage system of Guest, Coffee, Caffe to keep this idea front and center. First and foremost, we take care of our guests, coffee comes second, and cafe issues come third. (We can all relate to how annoying it is to be standing in line somewhere and see no one at the register while an employee is cleaning the windows.) To hit our mark, we need all three components working together—we can't say we're taking care of our guests if we're serving subpar coffee in a dirty cafe. But starting with the Guest is a constant reminder of what's most important.
We can all learn to roast delicious coffee or build the perfect Manhattan. Skills that used to be closely guarded trade secrets are now in the public domain, and as it turns out, all of them are easier than emotionally connecting with hundreds of guests a day.
The trend of pretentious craftsmanship is over. Our guests don't exist as a means for us to pursue our craft, rather, our craft provides a conduit for delighting our guests.
If you’ve ever received remarkable service, the person who gave it to you likely spent more time focused on your needs than theirs. They made the experience all about you, and because of that, you have a deep appreciation for them.
This is the seemingly paradoxical relationship with being of service: it’s not about you, yet your role deeply matters.
One of the exercises we do at new hire orientation is to have new team members share stories of memorable experiences. They could take place at a coffee shop, restaurant, doctor's office, or on a vacation with friends. Anything goes. People share experiences of all kinds, and the common thread woven through these stories is someone making a choice to put another person at the center of the universe.
We share these stories to tap into how these experiences make us feel and understand that every day, we have the opportunity to create those same feelings in every guest we serve. When we recognize the joy in receiving, the joy in giving becomes apparent.
The range of experiences in these stories also reinforces one of our core beliefs: Creating a positive impact has nothing to do with what you do and everything to do with how you do it. We’ve all had regrettable, forgettable, and incredible experiences with people from every imaginable occupation. It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a huge corporation or it’s your first day working the register at a local coffee shop. The experiences you create for the people around you shape your life and theirs.
Find the humanity, find the magic.
I recently popped down to my neighborhood bike shop with my daughter to pick her up a Strider. I walked into an empty shop and the employee behind the counter had his head buried in his phone. He looked up at me as I walked in then went back to typing on his phone. We walked around the shop for a long minute before he put his phone down and said “Can I help you?”
I could have ordered the same bike on Amazon, it would have arrived the next day with free shipping and I would have had more color options to choose from. But memories are precious and I wanted the experience of going into a physical bike shop with my daughter and watching her eyes light up as she trots around, plays with the pedals of the display bikes, and ultimately gets the stoke of taking something home with her.
As an independent business owner supported by the community around me, I deeply want to support other businesses in my community. But the reason local businesses are special is not simply because they’re local, but because of the connection and care they have the opportunity to provide. What the bike shop failed to realize is that their real business opportunity is to create an experience, because the products they sell are simply commodities (there are hundreds of places I can buy a Strider).
If we strip away the magic of the human experience we shouldn’t be surprised when people opt out of supporting local businesses and simply click to buy on Amazon. But if we take the opportunity in front of us seriously and focus on creating connection and delighting our guests and partners, we become irreplaceable.
Apologies and excuses are for amateurs. If we want to be seen as professionals it makes more sense to scrap the excuses and instead draw a well-defined quality line. Once something meets or exceeds the quality line it’s good to go. No apologies, no excuses.
If you consistently find yourself embarrassed by the work you’re putting into the world, raise the quality line. If you’re consistently unable to ship because nothing meets your quality line, you can either lower the quality line or get better.
While it’s tempting to claim “nothing less than perfection,” reality doesn’t support this.
At any given time we (and most other specialty coffee shops) have a spread of baristas on bar with anywhere from three months to three years of experience. To be cleared to work on bar, each barista needs to meet a certain standard, but the more experienced barista is on a whole different level. A cappuccino from the less experienced barista is delicious. A cappuccino from the more experienced barista is a transformative experience. If we set the quality line in relation to the three-year baristas skillset, that’s fine, we just have to create an infrastructure that ensures we’ll always have a full team of baristas with no less than three years of experience and be willing to say “I’m sorry, we’re not serving cappuccinos today” when we don’t. This approach doesn't serve our guests or our organization.
It’s perfectly fine to have a lofty vision and a realistic quality line—you can’t charge for garbage, but what’s something you can deliver that identifies you as a player in the game you’ve chosen to play, that you’d be proud of?
Set your quality line accordingly and deliver. No apologies. No excuses.
If you’re opening a coffee shop and looking for a wholesale roaster to partner with, how can you choose from a sea of roasters all claiming to be “the best”? Dozens of roasters claiming to source and roast the best coffees on earth can’t all be telling the truth.
The generic best is lazy. It’s a cop-out that keeps you from being specific about who you are and what you hope to provide for your guests and partners.
Mission
A mission can save you from the trap of the generic best.
Our mission at Cat & Cloud is to “Inspire connection by creating memorable experiences.” We believe deeply in the power of day-to-day experiences and the opportunity each of us has to leave the people we come in contact with feeling better than we found them. For people who believe what we believe, we’re the best wholesale partner choice. Our mission is a point of alignment.
That's not to say we can ignore objective quality. We roast and source delicious coffee, but so do many of our contemporaries. When you operate in a specialty space, being good at what you do isn’t a differentiator, it’s simply the cost of being in the game. Sure, eight times out of ten I prefer our coffee but that’s a stylistic preference closely tied to the fact that I had a heavy hand in establishing our coffee style.
Claiming we’re the best in the generic sense just isn’t true. Claiming we’re the best in specific instances is true. Ignore the generic, embrace the specific.
Coffee quality assessment can be a tricky thing. On one end you have your opinions and tastebuds—if a mediocre coffee is disguised by flowery processing methods or roasted to a crisp and you like it, that’s fine, you’re allowed to like whatever you want. But without injecting some sort of objectivity into something that’s highly subjective (taste), we can’t have productive discussions about quality.
Successful, Popular, Cool
Objectively any new car is faster, safer, and more capable than its 1960’s equivalent. But does that make it better? If your metrics are the previously listed qualities then yes. But if your metrics are how engaging it is to drive, how it makes you feel when you step out of it, or how many people remark about it when you pull up to the coffee shop, then perhaps not. McDonalds sells 2.5 billion hamburgers a year. Clearly, they’re popular but even people who love the way the food tastes don’t have any illusions that they’re eating something quality, and eating at McDonald's offers no sense of occasion or social clout.
Plugged In
As we use the real world more and more as a tool to increase our status and fuel our participation in the digital world, the lower our bar of objective quality is likely to get. Cultural fads and fly-by-night trends spread quickly and are easier to engage with than the slow and often lonely pursuit of the truth. But our work doesn’t have to be a slave to trends. It all comes down to the metrics we choose to focus on, being clear about our promise, and living up to it. McDonald's has different metrics of success than David Kinch.
Back to Coffee
My business partner Jared came back from the annual Specialty Coffee Association Expo and confirmed what we all knew: that anaerobic coffee fermentation is indeed the flavor of the week. I think engaging in a trend is fine, and from an enjoyment perspective I've always seen coffee as a choose your own adventure book—drink what makes you happy. But let's not confuse novelty with quality. You might like it more, but Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey isn't in the same league as WhistlePig 15.
Here’s how I see the new trend of Anaerobic Natural Co-Ferementation in coffee. I’m obviously being cheeky but I don’t think I’m wrong.
If we treat feedback like a big scary monster, it will be a big scary monster. If we treat feedback as simply another aspect of our job, it blends into our workday. Greeting guests, dialing in espresso, sweeping the floor, giving and receiving feedback.
Dialing in espresso can be intimidating but when we teach it we don’t lead with “This is super difficult and scary, and you only need to pull espresso when you feel completely comfortable with it.” We lean into the fun that’s involved in the process and focus on Why making delicious espresso matters. (How does this connect to our mission and values?)
We can treat giving and receiving feedback like making espresso. It’s a skill that helps us bring our mission of Inspiring Connection by Creating Memorable Experiences to life. It’s not about being in charge or being berated—it's not personal at all, it’s just one tool of many that we utilize in the pursuit of our promise.
We can make delicious espresso when we’re having a good or bad day. We can give and receive feedback when we’re having a good or bad day. Feedback is espresso.
When Baristas are fresh out of training and on bar for the first time, things don’t go perfectly. The cozyness of the lab is no substitute for the dynamic nature of the cafe. Drinks stack up, last-minute order changes are made, and the pressure of the line weighs heavy.
Eventually, every barista makes a drink that they’re not sure they should serve. In that moment, the best way forward is to immediately decide: Am I serving this or not? Yes or no? Then push forward.
Immediately serving a subpar drink, although not ideal, is better than stopping the whole train and staring at the drink for 30 seconds (it won’t magically become delicious because you’re stressing about it), ruminating over a grind adjustment, or looking around for someone to tell you that it’s ok to serve it.
If it’s eating at your soul, immediately remake it. If you’re not confident that you can remake it to quality spec, immediately get help. If you decide to push forward and serve it, slide it across the counter with a smile, serve it with no excuses, and let it go. Fully commit to your decision.
Such is starting a project or building a business. Making the perfect decision is out of the question because you don’t have enough experience. Not making a decision for fear of making the wrong one is guaranteed to get you nowhere. Making a decision and second-guessing it every step of the way is the recipe for anxiety.
Commit.
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