It is not a gimmick that we have incorporated a coffee bar into our retail shop concept. We love coffee and feel strongly about the industry from farm to cup to compost.
As a function of serving great coffee, we spend a lot of time sampling coffee, attending coffee events, and generally immersing ourselves in the larger specialty coffee world.
To be honest, there's a lot that rubs us the wrong way. Too often, it seems like priorities get lost in the shuffle of milks, TDS, brew methods, competitions, and on and on.
Coco just wanted to take a moment here to state for the record our philosophy on coffee. For us, coffee can be distilled down to two words: respect and appreciation.
These two words make up the lens through which we view the industry and serve as the north star that guides our "coffee program" at Sightsee.
What does that mean, tho?
We respect and appreciate the work that goes in to cultivating and harvesting coffee around the world.
Our respect and appreciation for those farmers translates into working with roasters/importers who pay the farmers appropriately.
We believe it is respect and appreciation for the farmer's work that drives the best roasters to bring out the unique flavors each coffee individually has to offer.
We, as the servers of that coffee, are motivated by respect and appreciation for the work that takes place in the supply chain before us to brew the coffee to its utmost potential. It is a wonderful burden of responsibility to bear. We do not take care to "dial in" each coffee just for quality's sake alone and certainly not for any sense of pretentious superiority to anyone that doesn't - insidiously tempting as that can be at times.
When we serve coffee, we do so out of respect and appreciation for each person as a unique individual that comes through our shop.
It is our desire that each customer engages us and the coffee we serve with respect and appreciation as well. We don't care if you pause to articulate all of the notes you get from a fresh pour over as it cools, or if you immediately put a spoonful of sugar in your cappuccino...so long as you do not lose sight of the care that has gone into your drink and the positive attitude with which it was served.
We aim to be as sustainable as possible throughout the process out of respect and appreciation for nature. Coffee can be a very wasteful industry and all the while it is increasingly threatened by rising global temperatures. We have a long way to go, but at every opportunity, we try to pay our respect and express our appreciation to the earth by minimizing the waste we produce.
Ultimately, for us, no coffee, farmer, importer, roaster, company, shop, barista, or customer is "better" or "worse" in an absolute sense. It is simply a matter of the degree to which one acts out of respect and appreciation for others in the chain. We certainly respect and appreciate everyone who does and hope to be among your ranks for a long time.
