James Governor's Monkchips

Meet Our Baristas: Celebrate Craft in Coffee and Software

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A few months back I was in Cupertino, and quite by chance found a truly outstanding coffee shop – Bitter and Sweet. Given I had unsuccessfully tried Yelp, Google and Foursquare for recommendations for decent coffee I was kind of stunned to walk a couple of blocks from the Cypress Hotel and come across a local indie place. Launched by Janice Chua in 2011 Bitter and Sweet is the real deal – celebrating great coffee but also coffee craft.

I have written before about Making Stars of Your Developers, in context of WS02, which has this wonderful /About/Team/Engineering page.

A confident business is not afraid to celebrate its people, and realises that “the team” is more than the executive staff. A confident business celebrates people and skill. A confident business does things like… have a blog called Meet Our Baristas.

This is Allen. He rocks.

My favourite comment from his Q&A?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be just like Janice.

When your employees want to be like you when they grow up, you’re doing something very right. Janice Chua- I salute you, and your staff. Bitter and Sweet is the only place in Cupertino to have a coffee.

disclosure: i am a mad coffee snob.

2 comments

  1. James,

    As a Brit, you may appreciate this coffee story.

    Sometime back in the 70’s I wandered into a coffee store in the Village, and bought a bag of beans.

    As the owner was ringing up the purchase, I asked if there would be any sales tax.

    He replied, “Nope. We settled that back in 1776.”

    I then realized that no American politician had ever –or would ever –go on record as favoring a tax on coffee or tea.

    1. dave- wonderful, though i always thought apocryphal.

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