When I moved on to being a Barista in North Carolina and went through my coffee basic training I started to see the how deeply complex and variable coffee is and how I could maximize its potential. My enthusiasm to get the most out of my machine and beans was picked up by my customers and pretty soon I had regulars that were so regular that they would chew me out if I was late or inquire about me if I was sick. I became like a neighborhood bartender to sober people and pretty soon I knew the back-stories for most of my customers. Somehow in our 2 minute daily interaction they were able to tell me the most intimate details of their life. My relationship to coffee was still somewhat distant, I was not connected and educated about where my coffee came from and what that meant . My goal was to make people smile all day long and the coffee was a means of doing so. Luckily my business partner was passionate about coffee and had the experience to make sure our coffee met the highest standards. I learned how to turn coffee which I thought a vehicle to imbibe caffeine into something that made people look at their cup in amazement, stop on their way out the door to turn back and ask me questions. It was like magic.
My connection to people shifted my connection to coffee. I needed to be able to answer questions about free trade, origin, taste differences and roasting methods. My roasters (Broad Street Coffee Roasters which unfortunately are no longer in existence) were an inspiration. When I sat them down for a deeper perspective they were an inexhaustible source of information. They referred to growers by their first names and kept their pictures on the wall. They had a keen sense of responsibility for the livelihood of these growers and I realized that we were both motivated to enhance our work through human connection. Them to the grower, I to the coffee-drinker.
