Kottke has some great guidance for creating an environment of trust as witnessed through his local donut guy(s).

When an environment of trust is created, good things start happening. Ralph can serve twice as many customers. People get their coffee in half the time. Due to this time savings, people become regulars. Regulars provide Ralph’s business with stability, a good reputation, and with customers who have an interest in making correct change (to keep the line moving and keep Ralph in business). Lots of customers who make correct change increase Ralph’s profit margin. Etc. Etc. And what did Ralph have to pay for all this? A bit of change here and there.

If you click through to his original lesson from the donut guy, there are some tips worth noting for retaining customers. From my perspective there should be some coffeeshop owners who read these posts. Local shops could benefit from this sort of service. And, I believe it could help get a good cup of coffee down to $1 per cup, which is exactly where I think the price point should be. BUT, that’s a different post for a different day; I’ve even created a ‘cup of coffee’ model in Excel and ran the numbers – it works.

I’d like to be an investor in a company that makes these with discarded cardboard. I think a basic stamp would be rather easy to make to cut these.

I like whiskey; I like coffee. I like them together in the form of an Irish Coffee. I found the Classic Irish Coffee recipe recently. A bit of background on the drink…the Irish Coffee was originally created in 1942 by an Irish chef/barman, Joe Sheridan, as a warm and welcoming drink for the first American tourists who arrived in Ireland via transatlantic passenger airplanes.

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Pour hot coffee into a warmed glass until it is about 3/4 full.
Add brown sugar and stir until dissolved; stir in the Irish whiskey.
Top with lightly whipped cream, being careful not to blend cream with the coffee/whiskey. Serve hot!

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If you feel like having two, might I suggest this alternative Irish Coffee recipe inspired by the Buena Vista Irish Coffee service in San Francisco.

I’ve found where my New York office will be located (on an “as needed basis”), 30 Water Street (via PSFK and UrbanDaddy). In fact, many of you can probably attest to me pulling out my soapbox to wax on my vision for CurrentBlend, which includes a co-op and co-working space. 30 Water Street comes pretty close to nailing what I’ve been thinking.

The CB space would have a coffee shop and co-working environment with a number of other ideas in the hopper depending on the space. Rather than being just a “personal think tank”, I’m looking for a “collaborative think tank” with people of similar goals pooling resources to accomplish these common goals.

More to come, but I’m looking for cities, buildings, ideas and people who may have an interest, so please contact me to help me get the idea hashed out.

Coffee by week is a really cool visual of how much coffee (and cost) one person is consuming – bonus points for playing with the cool day-of-the-week feature at the top.

What I think is coming is a trend toward a measurement of what we has people consume and do, the quantified self. I have been meaning to track some of my “stats”, but haven’t found a way to make myself interested in doing so. Using the visual photos seems to be a striking way to do this and now I’m thinking about how to do that and still track the hard data (maybe combine with the food scanner to track nutrition). Regardless, I like to see the cost and photos together of this project.

Do you have vanilla ice cream and espresso? The perfect afternoon treat is an affogatos. I made it and it’s good.

1. small scoop of vanilla ice cream
2. pour an espresso shot over it
3. drink it

This past Christmas at my house I was flipping through one of my mom’s cooking magazines and found this recipe that I want to try soon (I would have tried it sooner, but just found the scrap paper in the back of a closet).

Ingredients

• 12 cups water
• 2 cups dark roast coffee
• .5 cups powder creamer
• .3 cups cocoa
• .35 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 10 tablespoons bourbon
• 10 tablespoons whipped cream

Directions

1. boil water
2. add coffee
3. remove from heat, let stand for 15 min
4. pour through strainer into large saucepan
5. combine creamer, cocoa, sugar, cinnamon and red pepper
6. add combination to pan, stir and whisk
7. add bourbon and whipped cream

Just tried making my first shakerato, an Italian iced espresso drink, and it’s delish. I love the crema; it’s super frothy. I used a sugar cube instead of the syrup. This is my new favorite iced coffee drink, fyi.

• 1 espresso coffee
• Sugar syrup (or a little superfine sugar)
• 4 small, 3/4-inch ice cubes