Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/66983
THINKING INSIDE THE BOX continued from page 49 AROUND THE WORLD: Costello's Travel Caffé in Portland uses its TV in an inventive way, playing footage shot by owner Chris Costello and his father during their travels throughout the globe. backbone of sports bars across the country, supported by doz- ens of specialty cable stations devoted to regional and national games. Those newer channels are simply extensions of TV's long- standing and iconic role in American bars, made possible by the explosion of ESPN. In a bar, the TV provides fodder for the exchange of views—or of blows. In other service contexts, it can be reassuring. TVs are increasingly found in salons and dental offices. And anyone who has suffered through a long layover—scheduled or unsched- uled—in a major airport is thankful for the presence of televisions among the concessionaires, tuned to anything. Yet the American coffeehouse is typically a TV-free zone. Might the absence of television encapsulate a cultural critique? Probably not. Specialty coffee is as diverse as America, with no particular political ax to grind. No, it's not about the content of the programming. It's about the medium itself. It's about American television's overarching role as a conduit for the mar- keting of commercial goods and services. It's about the frenetic pace, the noise, the bad news, the chatter. It's about how damn captivating strong visual imagery can be … especially when you're trying to ignore it. To some extent, the American spe- cialty coffeehouse is the antithesis of TV. Randy Adamy, owner of Birmingham, Ala.-based O'Henry's 50 COFFEE ALMANAC 2012 Coffee Roasting Company, puts it this way: "Our motto is people coming together, talking to one another, having a sense of com- munity. To do this, you have to get away from distractions like TV. We call it our five minutes of sanity." Coffeehouses offer an alternative form of interaction. Where broadcast TV programming is one-size-fits-all, specialty cof- fee is about the unparalleled uniqueness of your singular shot. Coffeehouses are businesses and customers are consumers, but often those consumers come in seeking a respite from consumer culture. At $1.50 a shot, it's almost like getting something for free. TV talks at people, whereas the coffeehouse—especially if it provides Wi-Fi—offers them a chance to speak. To a great extent, Wi-Fi has usurped the role that TV plays in bars—something to do besides drink. Why should customers zone into "Billy the Exterminator" or "Dog the Bounty Hunter" when they could Skype with friends in Mali, design a fixed-gear fan site on their iPad or buy discount Converse All-Stars from Zappos, all while sipping a cappuccino and listening to their Shuffle? The answer lies in one word: "content." If you're willing to liberate the TV monitor from canned broadcast content and invest time and money in creating or sourcing interesting material, you can unleash a whole new potential for community and creativity in your shop. continued on page 52 COURTESY OF COSTELLO'S TRAVEL CAFFÉ