Compostable Cups Are Here!
The new Phoenix Coffee compostable cups are just starting to arrive at our cafes. These cups are the culmination of almost a year's worth of thought and effort. They were painstakingly designed by our in-house designer, Sean Higgins. As the new cups begin to arrive at each cafe, we will now offer you a choice when you purchase a beverage to go: either bring your own mug or buy one of our new compostable cups for $0.10 each. This nominal ten cent "green fee" is our way of encouraging everyone to adopt sustainable habits, such as bringing your own mug and minimizing the use of disposables whenever possible. In Ireland, the country reduced the use of disposable shopping bags by 96% by introducing a similar "green fee". We hope to reduce our use of disposables by more than 100,000 cups this year, and to compost just as many, thereby reducing our ecological footprint. Thanks for helping with our efforts! You can read our press release here.
Weekly Events at the Lee Road Phoenix
Every Tuesday, there is a Spanish Club that meets starting around 7:00 pm. Details can be found on Meetup.com, but all Spanish speakers are welcome.
Every Wednesday from 8:00 till 10:00 pm, we offer an open microphone for budding local musicians, poets and other performance artists. The evening is hosted by consummate open mic professional and local musical talent, Charlie Mosbrook. Charlie creates a nurturing yet creative ambiance at his open mics and we are so proud and pleased to have Charlie's talents featured at our cafe. Sign ups begin at 7:30 pm.
Here's a video of Charlie playing Sing Out from his 2009 CD:
East 9th Coffee Cupping
On Thursday June 24th, Nathan Lilly, lead barista, Samantha Bako, Elizabeth Jadud and Wes Johansen cupped two Ethiopian coffees in order to compare the difference between the two cups. Before they added the water, they noticed that the grounds from one cup had fragrant blueberry overtones, and the other smelled earthy and grainy. These differences carried into the brewed cups as well. The difference was that one Ethiopian cup (the fragrant one with the blueberry overtones) was our freshly roasted coffee, and the other cup was a stale sample of very old Ethiopian beans that Nathan had mysteriously procured. Nathan had set the table with the two cupping cups, a cupping spoon for each participant, a water glass, an opaque ceramic spit cup (GREAT IDEA, Nathan!) and a hot water spoon rinse glass at each place also. Great set up and very interesting comparison of two coffees.
Cawfee Tawk with Heidi Robb
Nationally known food expert and Cleveland resident Heidi Robb wrote an excellent ode to coffee with a big shout-out to the 
Phoenix Coffee West Ninth coffee cupping she attended last month. Phoenix is committed to educating the public about all things coffee and Heidi did a great job capturing the essence and experience at one of our cuppings. She writes on her blog:
...If you are a coffee lover at any level of enjoyment, a cupping will definitely hone your senses towards a deeper appreciation for the roasted and liquified bean. In a Triangulation tasting, three cups of ground beans are presented – two being the identical, one different. The goal is to detect the odd cup by smell and taste. It’s definitely trickier than it sounds, and forces you to pay attention to minute characteristics generally passed by in drinking a casual cup, much in the same way a guided wine tasting alerts your senses to specific nuances. Notes taken reflect the aromas and tastes of ” blueberry, potato, wet dirt, leather, bourbon”, among others. Smell and taste alter as the grinds change from dry to wet...
Thanks Heidi! Please note, almost all of the Phoenix Coffee Cafes have weekly cuppings. We are adding the times and dates to our website as we speak. Look for details on the News page and under the individual store pages on the Phoenix Coffee website.
GIFT PACKAGES
Looking for a gift for your favorite coffee or tea lover? Phoenix Coffee has made gift giving easy. Gift_Packages
Custom and Corporate Gift Packages: Call our Roastery 216.522.9744
Custom Coffee Blending Workshop Recap
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A big thanks to our sold out crowd at the Phoenix Custom Coffee Blending Workshop held at our roastery on January 22, 2011!
It was a sold out event, and people braved cold and snow to make it downtown early on a Saturday morning.
Yet education, fun, and of course copious amounts of coffee were served up hot. Our "students" were a bright bunch and quickly picked up on the history of coffee, different regions and varieties, types of roasts and other coffee information. From the coffee cuppings and tastings, attendees also came up with their own custom blends perfectly suited to their individual preferences.
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Each attendee also left the workshop with two pounds of their own fresh vacum packed signature blend.
We plan on doing more custom blending workshops in the future. If you are interested, please drop us a line here.
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Thanks again,
The Phoenix Coffee Team.
How Should You Tip Your Barista?
At Phoenix, we are thankful for the generosity of our customers who tip our baristas. We know that it's hard to know when to tip, how much to tip, and what is expected or even polite when it comes to tipping baristas. At a table service restaurant, the 18% guideline is firmly established. There really is no percentage guideline for counter service at a coffee shop, although on average, the gross tips from each day do add up to about 9% of the sales. Some people never tip, and some people tip $1.00 for their $2.00 coffee. We'd like to think that these big tippers are earning not only our appreciation, but also some good karma.
It's no surprise that our thoughts on tipping are quite different from Starbucks' position on the matter. In a 2006 NY Daily News article, Starbucks management was quoted as saying that Starbucks baristas don't need tips. “We don’t expect our customers to pay anything extra to receive our legendary service,” Starbucks marketing manager Dan Lewis explained. The tip boxes at Starbucks registers are there “to avoid loose tips on tables and counters throughout the store,” he said.
At Phoenix Coffee, our baristas do need tips, and we encourage customers to tip generously and often. We hope that our customers enjoy our authentic style of personal service, where baristas are given the freedom to simply be a person being of service to another person. We value this kind of personalized service, which is why you’ll never hear about a “standard greeting” or other service formulas at Phoenix. Instead, it’s our goal to create a warm, friendly ambiance at each of our cafes, where our baristas will greet you in their own individual way, and hopefully you’ll feel that they deserve to be rewarded for their efforts.
Thanks for your patronage and the generous tips!
Customer Compliment
We get a lot of customer feedback from our five cafes. But we wanted to share this one in particular because it is from someone who has been a Phoenix customer for almost 20 years, which makes it particularly meaningful. Thanks to Hughes for taking the time to contact us about how wonderful Bonnie and Amanda are, and congratulations to the two of you for being so committed to being of service to others. Here's the email...
