Every once and a while I feel like I need to step back and ask myself, "Who are we?" I'm not talking about the nature of humanity, though that's an excellent question too. I mean who we are as JJ Bean.
I know I could pick up a couple of info sheets at one of our stores and it would tell me exactly who we are. And that's great. But sometimes I require a more distilled version of who we are. I need to hear it in the vernacular. I need to taste who we are as a ristretto, straight up, without any milk to hide behind.
To aid me in this endeavor, I posed the above question to a couple of shaggy looking chaps who work down at Yaletown. I'll attempt to reproduce their answers as faithfully as I can. Forgive me fellows, if I am too generous in my paraphrasing. One of the blokes replied, "We try to give the people of Vancouver the best coffee experience we possibly can, in community-inspired locations, with humility and without pretension." The other mate said, "We will gladly and joyfully serve our customers anything at all they ask for, but as soon as they show the least bit of interest in coffee, we will bring them into our world."
What capital fellows! These guys have truly internalized the spirit of JJ Bean to such an extent that they can proudly tell me exactly who we are in their own words. And I agree with them wholeheartedly. To be succinct, JJ Bean is about LOVING COFFEE AND LOVING PEOPLE. Everything we do fits in to these two categories. As soon as we stop doing one of these things, we stop being who we are. Both loving coffee and loving people are equally important sides of the same coin. Think about the baking program for example. A synonym for the Baking Team's new raspberry crumble is "Loving People."
Thanks to the shaggy chaps for reminding me who we are, and thanks also to the scruffy manager of that location for bringing them up in the ways.
GFB
