We are coffee house aficionados as I have mentioned in previous posts. One of my goals is to be a barista some day. Now a Pioneer Press article describes a coffee university – Enrollment grows at Espresso U. I now have a new motivator! In case you doubted the appeal of coffee:
Nationally, the number of coffee houses has nearly doubled in the past six years. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, there are almost 24,000 coffee houses in the U.S., up from 13,800 in 2001.
The addition of wireless internet has made them a business hot spot. Yesterday the Rock Star and myself were working at Panera in the early morning before meeting with a client and we observed at least 10 business people working on laptops, 3 different business/sales meetings and 1 company (?) meeting of 8 people at one table. None of this is news, just an observation.
But be careful – this is pure coffee heresy:
To fuel its expansion, Starbucks in recent years has dropped manual espresso machines from many stores, replacing them with automated models that are faster and more efficient.
That is just plain wrong.