[dogma1138]

Because allot of the "marketing" of the "experience" has been focused branding the individual person behind the coffee rather than the coffee it self.

Go into any "artisan" coffee shop and the barista would pretty much look identical, many of them will engage and have their own "shtick" to make the experience of drinking their coffee "unique". The coffee it self is also going to be heavily branded and sold to you as some fantastic story with many images which again will be heavily focused on the people who were involved in the entire process from growing the beams to your cup.

This is what we are buying now, 20$> an ounce "fair traded organic beans" with some nice retro photographs of Bolivian coffee farmers combined with some 20 year old millennials inspecting the beans to make sure you get the "best" ones in your cup.

This is what you can't replace, brewing the coffee and even foaming milk is something that a machine can do easily, and arguably better than most people, heck even latte drawing can probably be better done with a 2-axis drip nozzle than a barista with a bamboo stick but when you pay 7$ for a cup of coffee you aren't paying for coffee you are paying for the experience that no machine can actually give you simply because you don't want it. You want the human contact because at least in my personal belief that is a coping mechanism we have adopted to make for the isolationist life style that many of us live today in which we spend more time with our phones than with people, and so we care now more about how our coffee and burritos are being made and by whom than ever before.

[throwawaykeno]

> brewing the coffee and even foaming milk is something that a machine can do easily, and arguably better than most people, heck even latte drawing can probably be better done with a 2-axis drip nozzle than a barista with a bamboo

Is this true?

I'm mostly convinced about the brewing part (except that even the most meticulous machine will make mistakes, and a good barista will throw out a bum shot whereas a machine probably won't know the difference).

But I'm not convinced about the milk part. Do you have links?

(FWIW I totally agree with the tone and overall thesis of your post. And I really wish someone would deploy freshly ground-or-vacuum-sealed/fresh milk machines in airports/cafeterias/hotels/anywhere there's only a starbucks. But I also feel like better-than-average humans are still better than state-of-the-art machines.)

[Grishnakh]

Screw the human contact; I'd rather pay less for my latte and get it made correctly, and more cheaply, by a machine.

For human contact, just have a nice coffee shop with comfy chairs where people can sit around and read, chat, etc. You don't need humans making the food for your human contact, you just need to be in an environment with other human customers.

You can also have a human server who brings the drink you ordered to you. One human can run the whole establishment, filling in in all the ways the robots can't, but letting the robots do the more skilled work. When I go someplace for food or drink, I want to sit down and relax, not talk to the guy prepping the food. And since the food prep necessarily has to be done someplace away from the seating area (because that's where the foaming-milk machine is), I don't see any value in having a human back there when a machine can do it better. Now I do see some value maybe in being able to chat up the girl who brings the drink to me where I'm sitting. But the person behind a counter making the drink, who I can barely even see because there's a giant milk-steaming machine in the way? No, I don't see the value there.

[retox]

I'm inclined to agree with your assessment, even if it seems to drip with bile. I've not much experience with genuinely interested baristas, but those that I have known made drinking coffee more of an event rather than just a forgettable occasion.

There's still room for the human touch but sometimes you just want a decent double espresso and to be left alone.

[Godel_unicode]

Artisan coffee shops are like vineyard wine-tasting that way. Maybe slightly better product, but what you're really paying for is ceremony.