Framing the pitch

Service is key in speciality coffee (as i'm sure you all know), get it wrong and we risk alienating a potential customer forever, get it right and well, you get the picture.

Again this subject has been written about before in far more depth than I intend to go into ( read this now please ) and will be written about in the future (talking about you AC) but bear with me whilst i take you on a journey which ultimately makes sense but begins with baseball. (?!!*"&£>?)

Baseball is a singular team sport, unique in the way that an individuals worth to his team can be minutely tracked and examined by statistics, if you've seen or read Moneyball, you'll know what i'm talking about.

Conventional wisdom tells baseball fans that the ability to score runs make you valuable, hence some of the biggest earners in the game being Home Run hitters, the stats gurus will show you that there is another way to prove your value, that the intangibles, the little things make a difference. That it's not as simple as just hitting home runs.

Catchers. Besides seemingly enjoying standing in the way of 100mph leather balls for a paycheck, they can impact the game in myriad of ways and so serve as my convoluted analogy! ( stick with me, this will make sense).

It seems like a simple job, catch the ball yeah?!, but part of the job is to "frame the pitch", make the catch in such a manner as to convince the umpire that it's a strike, even if it isn't. Think of it as providing a new frame of reference in which every ball is a strike, creating a new context for umpiring.

By doing this consistently over a season, a great defensive catcher can save his club upwards of 20 runs.

Now assume he hits 10 home runs and bats in another 30, that's over 60 runs he's responsible for.

Conversely a great offensive catcher is one who hits for power, maybe hitting 25 home runs in a season and batting in 50 . These players though usually lack elite defensive skills and COST the team runs over the course of a season sometimes as many as 26. Hopefully you can see where this is going, the second player may hit well, but he'd have to hit extraordinarily well to make up for his deficiencies defensively and be of equal worth to his defensive counterpart who excels in the intangibles.

The point of this is that old school baseball thinking can sometimes cost a team runs.

So now the analogy, it seems to me that for years 3rd Wave and Speciality Coffee has being trying to hit a home run with flavour whilst we use a more traditional hospitality model. Be nice, brew it big, bold and interesting and people will see the worth in it. But what if they don't?

Is it time for different approach? By providing the correct context for enjoyment of the drink and brewing well could we have greater impact? Could we achieve more success by paying attention the the little things, the things that we think are set in stone. In short shouldn't we place a greater emphasis on "Framing the Pitch"?