bruceb wrote:This is apparently the case with Jamie Oliver who was told by a customer that the coffee served in one of his restaurants was terrible. Oliver did some research on the matter, talked to some real coffee experts from the specialty coffee scene and started hiring trained baristas and purchasing fresh coffee. But most customers don't know what good coffee is and most restaurant owners and chefs are just not interested.
As cool as that sounds it's unfortunately not true... Jamie was never proactive about changing his coffee.
Fifteen upped their game because there were staff there who cared, but they weren't hired specifically to sort the job out. To my knowledge Jamie has done no research on the subject himself, other than a couple of quick conversations with me, espresso in hand.
The other factor that helped with Fifteen (both in Cornwall and London) was that they had Origin coffee doing a lot of work on the subject including training, cupping etc. Myself and Tom (from Origin) managed to push through the removal of Illy from Fifteen in London and the guys up there got the bug for it... hence why we saw 4 ex-Fifteen Baristas in the top 24 last year.