Oat Milk, Extra Hot, No Foam

Somewhere around the third or fourth visit, people stop ordering and start showing up. I noticed this a long time ago, standing behind a counter long enough to watch it happen to other people before it happened to me. Someone walks in, says a name, and whoever's at the register already knows what's coming. Oat milk, extra hot, no foam. Black, always black, don't even ask. That's not really a transaction anymore. It's a relationship, and it happened without either person deciding to build one.

I think about that a lot with espresso specifically, because espresso doesn't let you fake attention. You can wing a drip coffee most mornings and get away with it. You cannot wing a shot. The grind has to be right, the dose has to be right, the water has to hit at the right temperature for the right number of seconds, and if you're off by even a little the whole thing turns bitter or sour or thin and flat. Our Golden Hour Espresso is an African blend, bright and a little wild at the top. It's the kind of cup that rewards someone who's actually paying attention to it, start to finish, instead of running it on autopilot.

People are like that too. You can run someone on autopilot for a long time. Nice to see you, how's it going, good talking to you. Or you can actually pay attention. Notice that they always call after lunch and never before it. Notice they go quiet right before they say the thing that matters. Notice the detail they've mentioned twice without realizing they've said it twice.

So here's a question for you. Who do you actually know the order of? Not their coffee order necessarily, though that's as good a place as any to start. I mean who have you paid attention to long enough that you could predict them a little, the small stuff, the stuff that doesn't show up on a form. That's not a small thing to be able to say about someone. It's most of what a relationship is actually made of, underneath whatever we end up calling it.

None of this happens in one conversation. It happens by the fourth one, or the tenth, the one where you're not even trying anymore and you just know. It's slow. It's supposed to be slow.

I like making coffee for a living more than I expected to, and this is a big part of why. Every cup is a small chance to actually pay attention to someone, even a stranger, even just once. You start to believe people are worth noticing before they've given you any particular reason to think so. That's not a marketing idea. It's just true, and once you see it you can't really stop seeing it.

Nobody should have to earn being paid attention to first. That's always felt backwards to me, like we're supposed to decide someone's worth it before we actually look at them. I'd rather get it the other way around. Notice first. Let the rest follow from there.

Choose to be kind. Choose to be grateful. Choose to be happy.

— Nina of GiaNina Collective