SHIFT BREAK: Cupping is Overrated

Chris DeferioPodcast

I love cupping coffee. It is a great way to assess a coffee and learn how to identify defects, attributes, and nuances that allow you to make decisions about buying coffee and how to maintain consistency in roasting. But the issue we have in a lot of coffee is that cupping, a practice designed for the above scenarios, has been …

593: Why You Should Not Manage Gen Z

Chris DeferioPodcast

The favorite past time of many an owner is to gripe about their younger Gen Z staff. Before them it was millennials. Before them it was Gen X, before them…well, you get the idea. For as long as coffee shops have hired employees, leaders have found it challenging to lead and manage a younger work force and the reason given …

SHIFT BREAK! Become Immune to Fear-Based Coffee Marketing

Chris DeferioPodcast

“Don’t get left behind!” It feels like every post trying to sell you on a product relies on fear in order to make the sale. The idea of marketing to “pain points” as they say in the biz, is not entirely wrong since we do in-fact want to provide solutions for real needs. But where things go a step too …

592: The Criteria For The World’s Best Coffee Shop

Chris DeferioPodcast

Ranking the best coffee shops in the world is a task that sounds like a neat idea! That is until you realize the sheer impossibility of such a task not to mention the cognitive dissonance required to pretend like the results of such a ranking are in any way definitive  or substantive. The world of coffee shops thrives on professional …

591: The Problem w/ Focusing On The Numbers vs The Guest Experience

Chris DeferioPodcast

Focusing on numbers above guest experience may actually prevent you from achieving the numbers you need to sustain your business long term. Yet still people insist on creating environments in the shop that turn customers into marks to be worked for the sake to extracting as much out of them each interaction as possible so we can see average tickets …

SHIFT BREAK! Why You Need To Be A Content Creator

Chris DeferioPodcast

Today we are surrounded by content and it is expected of every customer facing brand to strive to create a brand persona and content to reinforce your values and attract others who share those things. The bi-product of this dearth of content is the underlying sense of anxiety, disconnect, and lack of grounding as it seems the more we produce …

590 : Founder Friday! w/ Patti and Jesse Ventura of Lontra Coffee | Los Angeles, California

Chris DeferioPodcast

When you build a trust through serving people with sincerity and passion, those same people support and uplift you. In the business of the coffee shop, those kinds of relationships are the life giving force that carries owners through the ups and downs of ownership. Today we get to talk to two of our industry’s sweetest people whose cafe is …

SHIFT BREAK! What We Lose When We Don’t Listen

Chris DeferioPodcast

Feedback is all around us. From the customers, staff, and the business itself, we can only make great decisions for the coffee shop when we practice listening to understand. Trouble is we often avoid listening for fear of what we will hear, or because we falsely think we know what someone thinks or that their opinion cannot be helpful due …

589: How Coffee Sets the Stage For Conversation w/ Actor Grant Garry

Chris DeferioPodcast

Coffee is a connector. I think we all have seen this in our personal lives, our social lives, and in the community we help facilitate through our shops. In the fast paced often stessful world of cafes and the vocation of coffee, we need to take some time, and leave some room for appreciating the real impact a simple cup …