The Most Overrated Skill in the Coffee Business (And What Actually Keeps Cafés Alive)
Staying alive starts with knowing whether you’re chasing reality—or an ideal. If you only listen to advice from within the industry, it’s easy to reach one conclusion: To run a coffee shop, the most important thing is making great coffee. I used to believe that wholeheartedly. But once I actually stepped into operating a café, I slowly realized something uncomfortable: the ability to “make good coffee” is overestimated in this business. It matters—but it isn’t the core. 01 | It Sets the Floor, Rarely the Outcome In a coffee shop, making good coffee functions more like a passing grade. If you can’t reach it, the problems are obvious. But once you do, its influence on the final business outcome drops off quickly. I’ve seen plenty of cafés with solid skills and consistent quality that were still operating under constant pressure. And I’ve seen others where the coffee was simply “decent,” yet the business survived steadily. Because what truly creates distance between c...