The humble bean.
The path is the destination.
How do you end up with a great cup of coffee?
Where does that journey begins? I never thought about it when I drank instant. It was only when I started grinding beans and brewing my cup, mornings and evenings, that I found how involved the path was.
From a hand picked coffee cherry to a perfect cup. How unpredictable and variable the final result could be. How adding a tinge of salt and cinnamon upped your game. How a few milliliters of water could do so much damage.
A large part of this path is the commitment to the craft. What is the difference between a cup from a Nescafe machine and one poured by a trained Barista? is there a difference? Who do you need to be to tell the one cup from another? Does it matter?
A barista is what we see, what is visible. What about all that isn’t? Hand picking only ripe berries. Pulping and sun drying them. Cupping and tasting the harvest. Storing, packing and roasting it. Grinding and brewing. Pouring and serving. Savoring and enjoying the aroma. Taking the first sip of the blend someone invested 8 minutes converting to a cup.
At each step, the choices we make change the final experience. We do it not because we care about the consumer, or about our products; we do it because of who we are.
Who are you? Who do you need to be for you to build great products? Or care about a cup of coffee? Or the tell the difference between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary? Between the gifted and the bland? How do you build stuff with love? We don’t find these answers by being comfortable. We find them by following the path of a humble coffee bean. Why? Because the path is the destination.
It takes four to six years for a tree to bear a first harvest. How you pick the harvest determines how long it takes to process it. Four to six months before the roasted bean finds their way to your grinder. Imagine the trauma of being boiled, de-pulped, sundried, roasted, grinded and then brewed again. All for a measly few ounces of a bitter foamy end product that brings together worlds.
Why do you think building a great product would be any easier? It isn’t.
The path of the bean to the cup is not about getting one thing right. It is getting all of them right. And then adding a few heartful of love.
From Craft — The new book on building great products by Jawwad Farid
