Intellivenice and a digression
May 6th, 2009As a teenager Kyle Glanville used to hot rod cars. As an adult he hot-rods coffeebars.
There is a lot to be said about Intelligentsia’s genre-destroying upcoming Venice Beach coffeebar, but I’ll skip the geeky details to point out perhaps the most interesting facet of the project: everywhere I go in L.A., people are talking about it. The anticipation here for the opening of this shop, beyond the usual coffee cognoscente circles, is probably unprecedented. The sort of buzz you might hear around a new restaurant from celebrity chef. This is partially a result of the increasing confluence of social media and foodie enthusiasm but also a reflection of how well-received Intelligentsia and its Silverlake shop have been in a town that has lacked for an established coffee culture.
Kyle and the crew at intelli are making some bold design choices for the new shop, as detailed in this recent LA Times preview. Some of the classic limitations and bottlenecks of typical cafe service are being eliminated and the customer experience follows a model that we road-tested at Slow Food Nation of more personalized interaction at multiple stations with knowledgeable baristas acting as hosts. Another element of the design that I’m excited about is the preferences for ad-hoc bench style seating and the total elimination of the usual tables and chairs. It was an idea I fought hard for during the design of the Silverlake store, that Kyle and architect Ana Henton have succeeded in fully realizing with the new space.
Though I’m no longer on the intelli payroll (full disclosure: I still enjoy frequent free coffee), I feel compelled to continue to evangelize for the great work that they do, particularly as drinking good coffee remains under assault. The trope that Specialty Coffee is an overpriced indulgence is regaining some currency thanks to lazy journalists musing on the economic downturn, the fall from grace of Starbucks, and new big-dollar PR blitzes for McCafe.
To digress, yesterday on NPR, I listened to MarketPlace’s Kai Ryssdal open a piece on the new McDonalds campaign with the line:
“Among the most brilliant marketing moves ever was convincing us to spend $4 for a cup of coffee that it costs a company maybe, I don’t know, maybe 30 cents, half a buck to make.”
Does noted business journalist Kai Ryssdal also think it is “brilliant marketing moves” that fooled me into paying $5 for a pint of microbrew beer last night? Did Kai Ryssdal feel as victimized by capitalist sorcery when he was munching an In-N-Out burger in the next (much more interesting) segment?
For some screwed up reason, of all the myriad bills, businesses and retail transactions we encounter on a daily basis, we reserve a special place of skepticism and strange condemnation for coffeebars in our amateur economic speculations. Why is that? Why is there a widespread belief that coffeebars, with their long lines and beverages priced sometimes higher than two times the price of a cup of coca-cola (larceny!) are mercilessly raking in profits? Where does this misapprehension and borderline hostility come from?
I’ll leave those as rhetorical questions and spare you any more of my half-baked essaying. Bottom line is that the indy coffeebar business gets some poorly-reasoned criticisms hung on it and we should explore creative ways of refuting some of the dumber misconceptions.
Intelli’s Venice coffeebar will hopefully be opening middle of this month.
Tags: coffee, coffeebar, intelligentsia, intellivenice, marketplace, npr
