I WAS offered a coconut oil sachet yesterday. Not in the salon for my hair, but at a local café for my coffee.
“No thanks,” I said, settling down to read, with my cappuccino-flavoured cappuccino.
The first article I happened upon was about barrel-aged coffee. This trend involves unroasted coffee beans being stored in barrels that once contained whisky or other alcohol. The beans then absorb the flavour. Starbucks are rolling it out at selected venues, described as Whiskey Barrel Aged Sulawesi coffee.
I looked around the independent café. The handwritten menu listed many beverages and, though barrel-aged coffee was not one of them, the café’s early adoption of coconut oil suggested it wouldn’t be long.
I took a sip of my plain Jane Joe. Was “barrel-aged coffee” something a Scots drinker should be proud of? A whisky cocktail. Well, a whisky mocktail. A whisky mocha-tail?
Other issues began to emerge. How much alcohol would beans absorb? Enough to make you drunk? Was bean-bevying about to be a new thing? If you were bean-bevying in Scotland, did that mean you could only have a 125ml measure of coffee? At Starbucks, that would herald the end of the tall and the grande. Big yins have long been felled by Scots drinkers, but not usually coffee cups. Would people be charged for “driving under the influence of a flat white?” “I didn’t know it was barrel-aged, m”lud..”
Sigh. From coconut oil to lattes that turn you into a lush, coffee has become a beans arms race. It’s almost HK$50 for a coffee – not much less than five quid – in cafes near me.
Café owners need to refocus. There are steps that could improve the coffee drinking experience but none of them, any longer, are about what’s inside the cup.
“Excuse me.’ I moved my bag for a woman who wanted to sit alongside, which brings me to the first of some non-bean ways to add value. Shouldn’t cafes routinely have bag hooks under their tables? Not to is a hanging offence – and puzzling. One thing that obsesses Hong Kongers is clever storage. Why, then, is short-term, cappuccino-duration storage of expensive handbags and manbags given no consideration?
So many promotional slogans could be used. “Drink here and hook-ups are guaranteed.”
Café owners might also think about the seats they provide. I have long called for a restaurant app which would review chairs. Unpadded seats are to be avoided in hot places like Hong Kong as they are deeply shorts-unfriendly. Wicker is especially undesirable, for its imprinting abilities. In Scotland, hard seats are no joy either. Women come equipped for hard drinking – coffee on an unpadded stool – but 60 denier thick black tights, modern female leg armour, have their limits.
Even if café owners favour firm furniture to discourage people from staying all day and using the wifi, they could at least have the seat equivalent of happy hour. “Comfy Hour” –when cushions are put on the hard seats. Watch the uptick in female custom.
Better all this than whisky-tinged coffee. Really. That’s scraping the barrel.
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