In Convenience

I have tried, and today failed, to enjoy a coffee shop coffee. I'm sure we've all got a reasonably low expectation of the modern coffee shop by now - and as far as I can tell thats how they stay in business. Commercial coffee is a metagame between the customers low standards and the vendors willingness to meet them.

High street coffee is, on average... well average, and nobody seems to mind. Conceptually and historically the cafe, the plaza or agora are meeting places so the quality and quantity of the consumption on and around them is all but irrelevant. The 20th Century High street cafe is only the modern incarnation of a long tradition and the 21st Century Coffee Shop its newly commercialised cousin.

I wouldn't like to suggest that such an establishment isn't fit for purpose, or that it doesn't have its place. The could be some speculation that its lost it's purpose and is now out of place. Sitting in a plastique chair you can watch production line drinks prepared identically and so quickly you'd think a business model depended on it, quite the opposite from staying to talk, think and relax in a public meeting place. The purpose if this venture is to serve people quickly and the custom to sever then from their money in exchange for 200mg of caffeine diluted with hot water and steamed milk.

If a product it must be, then coffee preparation is readily autonomic - the end product is a matter of a causal relationship between a small number of easily controllable variables - water temperature and pressure, mass and consistency of grind and so on. It therefore follows that the commercialisation of this process, once automated, becomes a matter of finding a machine operator who is easy on the eye and willing to be occupied doing so.

The process of automation should not in its nature have to devalue the product and certainly shouldn't impact the experience at hand - the leisurely pursuit of relaxation, communication consumption, flirtation or whatever one so chooses. The common factor being the individual has the time to sit and make such a decision, and its the loss of this factor - time, that shows where the purpose of the monetised coffee shop is maligned with the purpose of the customer. One by its nature wanting to accelerate the process and the other to slow it down.

And so at this point on our journey we have taken the humble cup of coffee at a bistro table and replaced it with a whistle stop at a coffee shop. The fare of this journey has been the quality of the product while the benefit is a convenience that undermines the purpose by stealing the time from a time out. Both the free time and the drink used to fill it have not just been taken from us but willingly surrendered.

What is the world coming to when you can't get a good cuppa ?