An Important Question

The best writing advice I ever received was delivered by my Fiction Writing II teacher, himself not yet a professor, and who looked exactly like Tobias from Arrested Development. He told us that, with everything we wrote, we ought to ask "What work is this doing?"

Something about that resonated with me. I think it may have been the word "work", invoking something utilitarian about our attempted artistry. The words and sentences should each do something, add to the collective whole and help work towards something. They should not simply be floating, frivolous things, however beautiful the intent.

So let's take that question, and use it on coffee drinks we have on our collective menus. What work is this doing? That is, why is it here? What role does it serve? What niche is satisfied?

A cafe au lait is different from a latte in obvious ways. The former is made with drip; the latter with espresso. But that's not really crucial information to most customers. So we ask, what work are those drinks doing? What does an au lait do that a latte does not? If you like X, which should you get?

A mere listing of ingredients is not satisfactory here. A cappuccino is not simply a foamier latte. There are different experiences to be had, expectations to be met, and work to be done.

But what is that work? What job is each drink looking to do? Answer that, and we can build a better menu, and recommend more appropriate drinks.

TL;DR

Venture in to any coffee shop - mine included - and you'll nearly always see a bevy of signs, filled with chalked drink names and descriptions. There's a lot to take in, for your average customer, and so many of them don't, opting instead to ask the barista for what they want. There are those, however, who do gaze at the whole menagerie, characteristically swamped by the informations presented to them.

Neither scenario is ideal, of course. We'd rather have something clear, concise, and useful. We'd especially like something useful, given that the entire point of a menu is to streamline the ordering process. Efficiency is the goal, and most shops - again, including mine - are not achieving this.

The problem, in almost every case I've seen, is volume. Nearly every drink one could commonly order is listed, with a description, sizes, prices, etc. It's all a bit too much. It's all a bit, to use current internet parlance, TL;DR.

The volume is such the people, very often, don't even bother. This leads to misunderstandings, and frustrations on the part of both baristas and customers. Clearly, this is opposite of what we want our menus to do.

So, I'm going to set about fixing mine. Or rather, some of my coworkers with better penmanship will set about the task. In any case, it's easy to blame customers for being slow orderers, readers, or apparently clueless. But those assumptions are both useless, and usually, false. They're our menus, and it's our job to make the useful. So let's do that.