This makes me think about the growth patterns of communities – Rich Millington over at Feverbee has been writing a bit recently about keeping your communities relatively small and not trying to grow them too quickly. Alongside this, the goal is to service lots of small niche communities within a larger umbrella community.

Well worth checking out his posts on this stuff.

Would Single Origin work if there were a chain of them? Ask Starbucks ;-)

The challenge then is to nurture a sense of overall community while also allowing for multiple user-generated and maintained micro-communities to develop too.

We’re all saying that different coffee places are selling different things. Hence the different types of customers.
We’re also all saying that the community-centred cafes are rare and that it takes effort and thought to make one successful.

As for the issue of rarity – I’d wager money on the fact that if you asked 10 different people for their best cafe with community pick, you’d get 8 different answers. They are out there, we just like to keep them to ourselves :P

I agree with Matt and you that the cafe as a cultural meeting point can be a Third Place, a community centre. At least that’s the theory. But is it an ideal and what’s the reality?

While we seek out cafes with community as a specific criteria, I wonder how many people thirsty for a caffeine-infused, volcanically-hot take away long black even ponder community as a criteria? I’ll speculate that a majority of people are motivated by other, more physiological needs (must-have morning caffeine infusion etc) and that community is not a predominant driver.

This is perhaps evidenced by the abundance of cafes peddling low-grade coffee, poorly prepared at inflated margins at espresso machines and kiosks around Sydney. At these places, I’d argue that convenience of location and price are the major motivating factors, and community is only paid lip service through some staid loyalty punch card system.

If community was the major motivational factor behind consumers’ cafe choices, we might expect to find far more excellent cafes fostering a strong sense of community. I suspect the reason the likes of Single Origin are so treasured is because they are actually very rare.

They’re rare because they are making the daily investment in cafe-shaped conversations, one of the only ways to build and maintain community:

“It’s like watching a small cafe pour an espresso versus getting a cup of joe at the local McDonalds. Completely different value propositions from the start.”

Ultimately, this then depends on what you place value on. For you and me Rai, it’s the sense of community. But I hold with my initial argument and suspect the majority of coffee drinkers are more focused on their physiological needs than their social needs.

Looking at Single Origin from this point, it becomes evident that they have designed everything around one thing.
Look around at other cafes – it is obvious what they are selling – coffees (usually badly made :P) or a communal experience.

So in this context, I’d have to agree with Matt. We do actively seek out cafes with a sense of community, if that is what we’re seeking in the first place.

Not sure if I 100% agree with the comment made in the article:

“People ’shop’ for community – we actively seek out a communal environment in which we feel comfortable and one which we feel meets our needs”*

This makes it sound like we consciously go out looking for community as a pre-defined entity. I think perhaps better is that we have been conditioned to shop for price, comfort and convenience and if a number of businesses meet those needs, then we decide between them based on a less well defined impulse, the community impulse.

It’s a sort of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs deal – we are conditioned to shop for price, convenience and comfort, but these aren’t necessarily the building blocks of community. It’s only once we’ve sated the physiological and safety needs (aka the most basic drivers when we shop) that we can begin to look at the more social needs.

I totally agree that many of the soft skills exhibited by the Single Origin peeps aren’t necessarily enshrined in some customer service charter – as you say, it’s just common sense to them. It raises an interesting point further to this: how do you go about identifying and hiring people who have these exceptional soft skills?

Malcolm Gladwell raises this point very well in a recent article for the New Yorker (Most Likely to Succeed) about how hard it can be to predict great teachers, and I might extend Gladwell’s argument to include community managers and moderators, as well as all jobs that are both complex, highly varied and soft-skill intensive.

Cheers for the nod about the ‘Third Place’ article too – I haven’t had a chance to read it, but when I have you might even find me writing something about it on this blog.

“People ’shop’ for community – we actively seek out a communal environment in which we feel comfortable and one which we feel meets our needs”*

Single Origin obviously fits the bill, it sounds like the “local” I need in my life to retain my sanity…..my morning coffee pitstop is essential.

The irony is that many of the things they do (especially the little but remarkable stuff) which makes you keep coming back for more, probably isn’t part of a “grand scheme” more likely they are doing these things just because to them, it’s “common sense” and Seth Godin would call remarkable.

@mister_black

========================================================================

*I found this great blog post (and paper) which introduced me to the concept of “The Third Place” – http://zi.ma/031e70 – it gave me a better understanding of why some cafes are just so superior and make me feel like I’m sitting on the patio at home with a quality commercial machine, roaster, barista, paperboy** & DJ in attendance.

The paper quoted in the blog post “Exploring the Social Supportive Role of Third Places in Consumers’ Lives” – Mark Rosenbaum – Journal of Service Research is worth a read for anyone in hospitality and is also very relevant to those *cough* running an online community :)

** computers are banned!

However, it doesn’t stop me from visiting any chance I get. They still welcome me the way they used to when I was a regular, and they always gift me my favs, which they still remember! (Banana bread and chilli chorizo pasta for the record)

Lush thought me all I need to know about relationship ‘marketing’ (<– that is such an ugly word). They speak to me as an individual, find out what I like/want/need, give it to me, make sure it is what I still want over time, listen to my feedback, remake my order if it wasn’t up to scratch (happens to the best), encouraged me to tell them when things *weren’t* up to scratch, got my business for life.
I mean, they’d have to close down for me to stop visiting and recommending and scheduling meetings there. And, like Single Origin, each person who serves there does the same for every single person. Of course, what they’re selling is stupendous, but that’s not the only thing bringing me back. They became my ‘family’.

Most certainly not an easy thing to do. Even harder in our business, without the face to face. But something to aspire to nonetheless.

Another experience I adore about the Single Origin Crew is the uncompromising expression of their unfiltered and unvarnished true selves.

These guys are the real deal- straight up.