Intelligentsia Venice - Groundbreaking Concept?

[Marshall]

I know this won't be a surprise for some, but Doug's plans for Venice look groundbreaking to me: http://www.foodgps.com/review/food-gps-exclusive-intelligentsia-venice/.

[Ryan Mason]

Sounds like a pretty amazing concept. I’m always interested to hear the solutions for the problems in our current café environment. The line has always one problem, quality interaction being another. If they can solve those two, I think they are well on their way to recreating a new way of serving the customer. This will be a huge distinguishing factor for Intelli.

Keep it up, fellas!

[nick]

Like perhaps some others, I read that and thought "Those guys are nuts and stupid."

Then I put it through my barista-brain translator, and realized what I really meant was, "Goddamn, I'm so jealous... that's AWESOME!"

A big part of the "undiscovered country" when it comes to the leading-edge of specialty coffee is retailers breaking away from the Starbucks model of store layout and service. This Venice shop has the potential to be a big step towards that effort.

Go Intelly!!!

[Rod Carmer]

Zell, Glanville and the Intelligentsia team have even customized the water. The Venice location will have three different waters: for coffee brewing, tea brewing and espresso brewing. “The way the reactions are catalyzed are a little different,” says Glanville. “The system we have is a reverse osmosis system that reformulates the water after it strips it, reformulates it with minerals. There are a couple metrics we use to measure water, TDS (Total Dissolve Solids) and Hardness…With coffee, the harder your water is, the less extracted your coffee gets and the more soapy and minerally it gets. We don’t want to be at the mercy of L.A. water. We want to control it, especially since L.A. water is a new thing every day.”

Great Kudos on what we do. LA water is bad but we have seen worse. Intelligentsia has been a great supporter or ours for years. We look forward to solving more of their water problems.

Rod Carmer
Cirqua Customized Water

[Jim Saborio]

Hell, back in '92 I worked at a little shop where we had four people on-bar at peak hours. We were so back-woods we didn't know any better than having each barista wait on a guest from start to finish. I'm not saying this is comparable to what Intelli is doing, but I always liked this single-barista approach.

We got really good at dancing around one another with hot cups of hazelnut creme coffee.

[)on]

game-changer.

[ErinMeister]

Wow, I have to say that I read most of that description with my jaw hanging slack. Can't wait to see this in action. Seriously.

[Ed Kaufmann]

Congrats Intelly! It is such a pleasure to be part of a community like this! Keep it coming! What's next? I am working on my genetic sorting machine for Ethiopian coffee. Ha ha! Not really.

[Kyle Glanville]

http://www.foodgps.com/review/intellige ... -revealed/

[Daniel Humphries]

STOKED!

Hey Kyle...

Do the pods come with the girls like in the photo?

[Jason Haeger]

Crazy.

I can't wait to see this in action.

[Ryan Mason]

You lost me, guys...

Not exactly what I expecting. I was envisioning more of a warm feeling...not so much the rafters and industrial look. I get the feeling that 'this is the space, and we are filling it with coffee' versus 'we are focusing on coffee and building the space around it.' (Does that make sense?)

My initial thought was wow, you'll enter this space, get escorted to a really cool area, have your own personal barista make your drink to your exact specifications, get transformed into this magical coffee talk land for a few minutes, leave feeling a lot better then when you walked in, and move on with the rest of your day. These pods would be really cool. They would have a lot of metal, wood, blown glass, and each pod would be different to some degree. The customer will totally be transformed....

If you are talking about a different way of servicing the customer then what we are use to, the pods should be the forefront. The customer should say 'ohhh, I want to go to that one' or 'wow, so and so is over there.' Make the pods pop, make them cool, make them something that nobody's seen before...something totally custom fabricated. To me, the pods look like an after thought.

So, you've lost me. I don't mean to sound brash/harsh/critical. But maybe I'm over thinking this. They are just concept drawings...

[Brett Hanson]

I feel a bit the same way, but I'm blaming that on the rendering. At this point the space looks more like an operating room, but I'm sure the execution will be much more complete.

This is the reverse of the usual beef I have with architects (yeah, you heard me- PE in the house!) -- the rendering in typical 3d concept drawings focuses so much on the textures in the space that even the interior of a johnny-on-the-job (rendered) looks like the kind of hip place I'd take my special lady friend on date night (back when we were hip).

The renderings above look like they were intended to show functional detail to the client (intelly), so it was probably a good use of their time, though not particularly enticing to (all but the geekiest) customers. Well played, architect...

[jmc]

it'll be warmed up by the baristas smiling faces and ya know, hot coffee. kyle likes his extra hot!

[Alistair]

LA Times: It's just you and your barista at Intelligentsia Venice
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la ... 0950.story

[nick]

I just kinda sorta wish we still had the content, archived or whatever, from the old BGA forum. "Salon-style barista pods" were proposed during a 'future of coffeebars' discussion in either '04 or '05... my foggy memory remembers perhaps it was Billy Wilson. Seemed sort of far-fetched back then... the future is now!