Smoothies
I held the belief that the world ran on coffee. Wrong. The world runs on smoothies.
Now if you have been hidden under a corporate rock for the past quarter century or so it is entirely possible that you may not even know what a smoothie is. I didn't.
A smoothie is a concoction involving fruit and perhaps some ice and maybe a little dairy product and sometimes even such things as flax seed. It all starts — and may even end — with fruit pulp in a blender moving at high speeds. As in puree. Ice might be added to obtain a milkshake-like consistency. Also ice cream or yogurt or milk or cream or all of them at once. Anyhow, you puree the mixture until it get as smooth as a baby's butt, pour it in a plastic cup with a domed lid with a hole in it for a straw (like a Slurpy), exclaim how gooood it smells and you have made a smoothie. It has absolutely no coffee in it whatsoever and women love 'em.
I held the belief that only women drank smoothies. Wrong. It's a transgender beverage.
Dave from upstairs is a former Wake Forest football player who now sells disability insurance to professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, etc. Weighing in at a trim 325 pounds, Dave normally comes down to the shop and orders the strongest thing I can make. Today he came down and order a smoothie. Burst my bubble.
I have been in something of triage mode for the past ten days, trying to get everything done before this weekend when the Foothills Wine and Arts Tour takes place. Considering that Backwoods Bean is one of the stops on the tour, that is a noble goal. And, until yesterday, everything was falling into place. The business plan was on track and I was on budget.
Now the one thing that a coffee shop must offer (in addition to smoothies, apparently) is espresso coffee and its production requires a special espresso machine which inevitably is made in Italy, the home of the espresso. The espresso machine is always the most expensive piece of coffee-related equipment in a coffee shop and the larger, more sophisticated ones can cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase.
My needs were for a next to bottom of the line commercial machine costing four or five thousand dollars new. My plan was to buy an "experienced" one and use it until I could afford a new one. Indeed, I found exactly what I needed on Craig's List for $1000. The thing has been my nemesis ever since it arrived. It worked fine ... for an hour. I tinkered and tinkered. It sorta-kinda worked. It blew a fuse. I blew mine. I ordered replacements for smoked parts from McMaster-Carr in Atlanta. (No one in the United States stocked the exact replacement part made in Italy. The one from McMaster-Carr was, naturally, made in China.) The machine worked for an hour and blew another fuse. Then it didn't work and didn't blow a fuse because the electronic control package had blown its brain and no one in the United States had a replacement "brain". At that point, I declared the machine officially dead. Otherwise I would have been soon so.
What to do? I mean folks are honking their horns at me from the street asking when the espresso machine is going to be working. I was at wits end. I call the CFO.
Now the CFO has become a believer in Backwoods Bean and her advice was to "go for it" which translated into buy a spanking new machine. This, of course, represented a major deviation in the business plan in terms of risk management, effectively doubling my capital equipment exposure. But, with her encouragement, I bought a new $3500 machine today that will arrive tomorrow. It's a "1 Group" (one or two espressos at a time) as opposed to the "2 Group" (one to four at a time) I'll need at the occasional rush hour but at least I'll have a reliable machine. And, it's an Italian beauty.
Now, here is the crazy part of the whole deal. Only about one espresso in ten is drunk as an espresso, the special coffee that all that $3500 is spent to acquire. The remaining nine are mixed with milk to make cappuccinos and lattes and mochas and such like.
And, the smoothie?
Well, it's made with a $35 blender.
Go figure.
Now if you have been hidden under a corporate rock for the past quarter century or so it is entirely possible that you may not even know what a smoothie is. I didn't.
A smoothie is a concoction involving fruit and perhaps some ice and maybe a little dairy product and sometimes even such things as flax seed. It all starts — and may even end — with fruit pulp in a blender moving at high speeds. As in puree. Ice might be added to obtain a milkshake-like consistency. Also ice cream or yogurt or milk or cream or all of them at once. Anyhow, you puree the mixture until it get as smooth as a baby's butt, pour it in a plastic cup with a domed lid with a hole in it for a straw (like a Slurpy), exclaim how gooood it smells and you have made a smoothie. It has absolutely no coffee in it whatsoever and women love 'em.
I held the belief that only women drank smoothies. Wrong. It's a transgender beverage.
Dave from upstairs is a former Wake Forest football player who now sells disability insurance to professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, etc. Weighing in at a trim 325 pounds, Dave normally comes down to the shop and orders the strongest thing I can make. Today he came down and order a smoothie. Burst my bubble.
I have been in something of triage mode for the past ten days, trying to get everything done before this weekend when the Foothills Wine and Arts Tour takes place. Considering that Backwoods Bean is one of the stops on the tour, that is a noble goal. And, until yesterday, everything was falling into place. The business plan was on track and I was on budget.
Now the one thing that a coffee shop must offer (in addition to smoothies, apparently) is espresso coffee and its production requires a special espresso machine which inevitably is made in Italy, the home of the espresso. The espresso machine is always the most expensive piece of coffee-related equipment in a coffee shop and the larger, more sophisticated ones can cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase.
My needs were for a next to bottom of the line commercial machine costing four or five thousand dollars new. My plan was to buy an "experienced" one and use it until I could afford a new one. Indeed, I found exactly what I needed on Craig's List for $1000. The thing has been my nemesis ever since it arrived. It worked fine ... for an hour. I tinkered and tinkered. It sorta-kinda worked. It blew a fuse. I blew mine. I ordered replacements for smoked parts from McMaster-Carr in Atlanta. (No one in the United States stocked the exact replacement part made in Italy. The one from McMaster-Carr was, naturally, made in China.) The machine worked for an hour and blew another fuse. Then it didn't work and didn't blow a fuse because the electronic control package had blown its brain and no one in the United States had a replacement "brain". At that point, I declared the machine officially dead. Otherwise I would have been soon so.
What to do? I mean folks are honking their horns at me from the street asking when the espresso machine is going to be working. I was at wits end. I call the CFO.
Now the CFO has become a believer in Backwoods Bean and her advice was to "go for it" which translated into buy a spanking new machine. This, of course, represented a major deviation in the business plan in terms of risk management, effectively doubling my capital equipment exposure. But, with her encouragement, I bought a new $3500 machine today that will arrive tomorrow. It's a "1 Group" (one or two espressos at a time) as opposed to the "2 Group" (one to four at a time) I'll need at the occasional rush hour but at least I'll have a reliable machine. And, it's an Italian beauty.
Now, here is the crazy part of the whole deal. Only about one espresso in ten is drunk as an espresso, the special coffee that all that $3500 is spent to acquire. The remaining nine are mixed with milk to make cappuccinos and lattes and mochas and such like.
And, the smoothie?
Well, it's made with a $35 blender.
Go figure.
Espresso Machines????
ReplyDeleteGaggia (Italian)
Jura (Swiss)
DeLonghi (Italian)
Krups (German)
Saeco (Italian)
2 Espressi at a time, highly professional, first rate quality, highly fatigue resistant, also making Capuccino and other varieties are between Euros 500 and 800 between Norway and Sicily, and the Russian border and the Atlantic.
By the way: The plural of Capuccino is Capuccini.
You may also put an "Espresso corretto" on your list. What you do is, you brew a regular Espresso and stuff it with a glass (2 cl) of Grappa (preferably), or Cognac, or Armagnac or such like. You may have customers who could get used to it.