jimseven #28 - Contains 0% Christmas

It’s too early for anything festive, and there’s lots to share this time around. So let’s get into it! 

Note: Does contain 5% gifs.

- I wrote a couple of pieces recently. One is an open letter, full of frustration, to roaster manufacturers titled (creatively) “Dear Coffee Roaster Manufacturers”. The second piece is a longer piece disagreeing with the idea that quality doesn’t scale. I argue that scale enables quality, and doesn’t truly inhibit it. (Something else stops quality at scale though…). “Quality Vs Scale”

- How Baristas Can Get Paid More. An interesting piece from United Baristas, and if you’ve heard me ramble of about coffee in one of my talks recently then you’ll know there’s a lot I agree with. The tricky bit is actually creating practical solutions, having covered the theory.

- A cafe is charging $60 for a cup of coffee. No surprise that I’m not a fan of this. What amuses me is that you can make this claim but you don’t have to provide proof that anyone is buying it. (I’m considering selling a bag of coffee for 1 million dollars, get that good free PR…)

- Coffee & Content. If you enjoy this section of the newsletter then you ought to be following this twitter account. Strongly recommended.

- How the sandwich consumed Britain. (Hat tip to Spencer for the link). [Sidenote: for years after winning the WBC, I’d often commented that people in the UK would have been far more excited about it if I’d been world sandwich making champion. I stand by that statement]

- The Flavo(u)r Connection. Hopefully you’ve all been a little inspired by Dale Harris’ WBC winning routine. This is a wonderful interactive page where you can explore the interconnectivity of flavour.

- Who killed the London restaurant scene? I think it is an important topic, and I know I keep going on about it. So much crossover to coffee…

- Spider drinks graphene, spins web that can hold the weight of a human. Seriously, is this what we should be working on? Upgrading spiders!?

- What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? If you haven’t thought about this, I’m a little surprised. This is well worth the long read.

- The Average Happiness of Twitter. I love this sort of thing, goes right back to 2009. Individual highs and lows are labelled.

Warning: I will be sending another email in about a week, because I’ve made a ridiculous thing that’s a little stocking stuffer and there’s a limited production. There’ll be a couple of other links in there too, so hopefully still worth reading!

Thank you for reading, sharing this newsletter with others and sharing interesting things with me!

James