 Happy Thursday! We hope you've been enjoying the staff spotlights so far. We love creating community and relationships with our customers, so don't hesitate to ask for your barista or servers' name when you enter our cafe. Our next staff spotlight is Emma! We asked her the following questions: Q. Why do you make coffee? A. I love the environment of Cafes and how people connect over a cup of coffee, either strangers or friends. Q. What is your go to order right now? A. Cowboy on Lactose Free Milk Q. What do you want to do with coffee in the future? A. I would love to work with coffee farming and adding to the sustainability of it. Q. A fun fact about yourself. A. I once participated in a 5 km walk across one of the Great Lakes in North America on a night where the temperature was -50C. Q. Tell us a crazy story (perhaps from an overseas trip?). A. Earlier this year, I was on an overseas outreach in Malaysia. It should also be noted that I'm a bit of a clumsy person, so my team and I were preparing to go out for dinner, which required using my phone to book 2 cabs to take us to the food court. We had also realized that a water bottle had been left in a cab taken earlier that day, so we called him and asked if he could bring it back. All three of these cabs arrived at our house at the same time. And, I was trying to do something with the house key, so I ended up dropping it in the storm drain that's about a meter deep, and mostly covered in cement. But, we decided to leave it and come back and get it later (because all of the cabs were already at our house). As we were eating, it started to rain, so we ate as fast as we could, thinking a normal Malaysian rain could wash our key away. We saved our gum and straws, and headed home, with the mindset of making a long stick. While trying to retrieved the key, we realized that there was little hope for "reaching" it. I then noticed an opening in the drain on the other side of the neighbors' driveway. So, I army crawled the 3, or so, metres to retrieve it, only to realize that the other half of our team who were at the grocery store had the spare key to the gate. Emma plays such a wonderful role in our cafe. She is so kind, and loves getting to know new people that enter our cafe. We hope you have a beautiful & restful weekend, and we look forward to seeing you when you come into The Meeting Place Cafe! Be sure to follow our blog for more staff and coffee updates, and come check out our new summer specials & chat with one of our wonderful staff! Blessings,
TMPC
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 Hello dear readers! If you regularly read this blog you would know that we have been doing a little spotlight on each of our staff members for the past few weeks. The purpose of this is for you, our customers, to feel more familiar with the people who are making and serving you your coffee! This week we asked Miriam to answer a few questions, so let's get right into it!
Q. Why do you make coffee? A. I make coffee because I love the community that it creates. There’s just something about standing behind the counter taking or making a coffee order that makes asking questions and getting to know new people so fun! Q. What is your go-to order right now? A. A flat white with hazelnut on oat milk! Q. What do you want to do with coffee in the future? A. I want to continue to use coffee to build an atmosphere of community and belonging. I think everyone deserves a place to call home and a group to call family, so I want to create a space where people can find that! Q. What country do you really want to visit and why? A. I really want to visit Greece and Malta because they are so beautiful and have a lot of history attached to them! Q. How many siblings do you have and what was your favorite part about growing up with them? A. I have 6 siblings- one brother (he is the oldest) and 5 older sisters. My favorite part of growing up with them was the holidays. We had some fun traditions and lots of food! Fun fact: the only vehicle large enough to fit us was a 12 passenger GMC white van that we would pile into in birth order! We love having Miriam as a part of our team, she is incredibly skilled in making coffee and is such a joy to be around! We hope you have a beautiful and restful weekend and we look forward to seeing you when you come into The Meeting Place Cafe! Be sure to tell us that you follow our blog! Blessings, TMPC  Good Afternoon! For this weeks blog post, we would like to continue our staff spotlight! Joanna has been with us for about three months and is also one of our baristas! Here are some questions we asked her!
Q. Why do you make coffee? A. I love the atmosphere it creates. Coffee has a great way of bringing people together and creating a chill environment where people feel comfortable. Q. How many languages do you speak? A. Three and a half. English, French, Spanish, and learning Portuguese. Q. What is your go-to order right now? A. Cappuccino with hazelnut syrup Q. What do you want to do with coffee in the future? A. I want to open a cafe- hostel that will help broken and abused people get back on their feet, while also giving travelers and community members a safe place to relax and build friendships. Q. What is your favorite food? A. Sushi! Our hope in continuing to share more about our staff team is that you, our customer, will feel more connected to the people who are making and serving you your coffee! Our cafe exists not only to serve you drinks, but also to build relationships with you! Enjoy your weekend and stay safe! Blessings, TMPC  Hello and happy Friday to all of you who are reading this! As you may or may not know, last week we posted a little spotlight on one of our baristas, asking some questions to help you, our customers, get to know the people who are making and serving your coffee! This week we would like to continue with this little series! Ana has been on staff with us for almost nine months and here are some questions we asked her!
Q. Why do you make coffee? A. Because coffee brings people together. There is nothing quite like the feeling of sitting around a table or sitting around the house with people you love and enjoying a good cup of coffee. Coffee is also soothing and comforting when the day seems hard and when there seems to be nothing exciting happening, a coffee break makes everything so much better. Q. How many countries have you been to? A. 17 Q. What is your go to order right now? A. Cappuccino with one pump of vanilla Q. What do you want to do with coffee in the future? A. I want to open a coffee shop along with a bed and breakfast and be able to use it as a ministry to bless the local community but also to provide jobs and a better life for people who are in difficult situations. Q. What is your favorite thing about cafe culture? A. When groups of friends gather and laugh and have a good time over coffee and pastries We look forward to meeting you, don't forget to mention that you have seen our blog when you come in! Blessings, TMPC  Do you want to know a little bit more about the people who are making your coffee here at The Meeting Place Cafe? Well, you're in luck because we are doing a staff spotlight this week on one of our baristas!! Maddie Mae is one of our newest baristas, she joined our team in September of this year! Here are some of the questions we asked her:
Q. Why do you make coffee? A. "It's very exciting to me! The more I learn, the more it intrigues me, and there's so much more to coffee than you would expect there to be." Q. Have you always liked coffee? A. "No. I started to really like coffee at the beginning of this year." Q. What is your favorite drink? A. "Iced caramel latte." Q. What do you want to do with coffee in the future? A. "I want to open my own cafe and have it be a beautiful community where people come to hang out and meet people, but also just enjoy each other and good coffee!" Q. What is your favourite thing about cafe culture? A. "Meeting new people." We look forward to sharing more about our other staff members and we hope that you enjoyed learning a little bit about Maddie! Our staff team is very friendly and loves meeting new people, so please feel welcome to come and hang out with us over a good cup of coffee! Blessings, TMPC Dear readers, this week we would like talk a little bit about coffee roasting! As some of you know, the coffee cherry is picked and then roasted before it actually makes it to the bags of coffee that you purchase from the shops. Coffee beans can be roasted in different ways such as light, medium, and dark, and the flavour of your coffee largely depends on the roasting process. “it is for the home brewer, perhaps the most important stage of the entire chain of events that takes us from farm to cup” “roasting the coffee beans.. this keenly observed and succinct process that gracefully traverses the line between science and art..” As you may be thinking, this is a very complex process that requires skill and diligence. After the coffee is picked from the farm, the roasters will buy it. Many roasters, but not all, will take into consideration the sustainability and ethics of the farm. Roasting coffee requires much skill and can very easily be messed up, this is why the roaster needs to be someone who possesses a great deal of skill. “..a bad roaster or an average roaster… can very easily corrupt even the finest specialty beans” The method of roasting a bean can change and manipulate the flavor dramatically which is why roasters will go through years of roasting and experimenting and trying different methods and styles until they come up with something that they like! “…the growing realization that coffee is enormously complex has only really cemented a feeling of acceptance as to how powerless we are to truly affect and select its attributes on a molecular scale.” Coffee roasting can take anywhere from 7-20 minutes generally speaking, and the main idea is to generate a flavor through applying heat to the beans. The water contained in the beans will slowly start to evaporate, this is the drying process. Then the beans will become so dry that they go through a stage called first crack. Think of a snail that has become too large for its shell that it pops off! The coffee can actually be consumed at this point but depending on the roast style, the process can be continued and roasted more. The longer you leave the coffee in the roaster, the more nutty, charred, and smokey the flavor becomes. The darker roasts are often used for espresso. There is so much more to this process, but hopefully this was a helpful intro into the coffee roasting process. We hope that you feel inspired to do more research and to learn a little bit more about all that goes in to the process of having a delicious cup of coffee! Have a blessed weekend! TMPC information sourced from The Curious Barista's Guide to Coffee by Tristan Stephenson. Published in 2019 by Cindy Richards.   Hello and good day to all of you lovely people who so faithfully read this blog! Today I thought it would be fun to share some random facts about coffee! Hopefully some of them are new to you! Let's get right into it..
1. Hawaii is the only American state that grows coffee 2. It was said to be discovered by a goat herder 3. Apparently adding cream to your coffee keeps it warmer for 20% longer 4. Coffee is a fruit 5. The most expensive coffee in the world “Kopi Luwak” is made from cat poop 6. Around 65 countries in the world grow coffee 7. A coffee tree lives for around 60-70 years and produces fruit for about 50-60 years on average 8. There are two main kinds of coffee beans: arabica and robusta Here are some websites where you can learn more about these facts and also find some more: https://www.agiboo.com/16-interesting-facts-about-coffee/ https://www.kimberleycoffee.com.au/blog/15-interesting-coffee-facts/ Have a lovely weekend! Blessings, TMPC  If you are anything like us, we absolutely love a pretty cup of coffee! Who doesn’t love designs on their coffee?! Well, this kind of art, known as latte art, is not an easy skill to master. It requires time and patience, practice and determination, it requires a good shot of espresso and perfectly steamed milk! But who’s idea was it to put milk drawings on top of a shot of espresso?! Well, the first place to be known for creating this concept is said to be the country of Italy, however the US is given the credit for making this idea go mainstream in the late 1980’s. I will attach a link so that you can see pictures of the process from cold milk to poured latte art!!
Check out this website: https://bluebottlecoffee.com/preparation-guides/milk-and-art Other information sourced from: https://www.baristainstitute.com/inspiration/history-and-basics-latte-art Enjoy!! TMPC  Have you ever heard someone in front of you ordering a coffee with a Ristretto shot? If you’re anything like me, you stop and think "wait, what is that?!" Well good thing you’re reading this because I’d like to explain it to you! Ristretto in Italian means ‘resitricted’. Essentially, this shot is pulled shorter than your normal espresso shot. The process of creating ristretto is the same as a normal single or double shot, but instead of letting the shot pull for the full length of time, it is pulled much shorter. Because of this, the amount of coffee that you are getting is much less, but hat doesn’t mean that there is less caffeine content. “Since a ristretto is an overall shorter pull than an espresso, the final drink is a slightly sweeter, more concentrated flavor that plays out without any bitterness.” Every cafe is different, but in our cafe it works something like this: a normal shot will pull on average for about 30 seconds and a ristretto shot will pull for about 15 seconds! I hope that you find this helpful and feel excited about ordering your next coffee with a ristretto shot just to try it out!!
(information in quotations taken from https://perfectdailygrind.com/2015/06/extraction-wars-espresso-vs-ristretto/ )  This week we'd like to explore a few unique cafés from around the world!
Sorry Coffee Co (Canada) “What's truly different about the Sorry Coffee Co is its unique branding. The Sorry cafe logo that appears on signage and cups is drawn by a local designer and before anyone has a chance to get bored of it, it changes. Every three months, the cafe logo is replaced by a brand new one. Sorry also provides pencils to customers, encouraging them to create art on their cups and come up with their own cafe logo designs.” (https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/cafe-logo) Little Man Cafe (Australia) “The Little Man Cafe is a quaint suburban cafe in Melbourne, Australia that was recently born out of a massive transformation of an old Post Office building. The minimalist all-white space is now a homey outpost for coffee lovers and those in need of a snack in a friendly environment. The cafe is designed in a way that makes it resemble a pristine home kitchen..” The idea of this cafe is that you feel like you are just hanging out in your kitchen having breakfast and sipping your coffee! (https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/former-post-office-building) (https://www.littlemancafe.com) Cafe 27 (Beijing) “Located in Beijing, Cafe 27 is a charming new greenhouse cafe that was designed by Shanghai-based Four O Nine. Boasting a creative organic menu and a stunning supply of natural lighting, Cafe 27 is situated within a glass building that former housed a greenhouse.” “Cafe 27 is a charming and aesthetically pleasing example of green architecture and of spaces designed to stimulate one's senses.” (https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/greenhouse-cafe) Foghound (South Africa) “..is an innovative repurposed shipping container. Despite its industrial and rugged facade, its interior is a sleek and modern cafe and showroom… The contemporary retail space combines a permanent glass-covered structure, with shipping containers acting as an ancillary element in the overall design” (https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/repurposed-shipping-container) (https://www.foghound.co.za) This is just a glimpse into the endless creative realm of cafes around the world! Let us know of any really incredible cafes that you have visited on your travels! |
TMPC CollectiveA blog brought to you by the staff of The Meeting Place Cafe. Highlighting coffee and community both locally and abroad.  Categories
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