Steve Drake: Coffee's Michelin Moment

This is an excerpt of a longer piece from our new magazine The Assembly Journal featuring Steve Drake – Michelin-acclaimed chef, founder of Dorking's Sorrel restaurant and owner of Guildford cafe Sorrel Social. Steve's article explores how fine dining taught him about the systems, service, and storytelling that can set up a cafe for success in a rapidly-developing landscape.

Be the customer

Like a lot of young chefs, I thought guests would forgive bad customer service and an uncomfortable environment if the food was good. I rarely gave a second thought to anything that wasn’t on the plate. At best it’s overconfidence, at worst its disinterest. And, as a customer, I see it in cafes.

I see it when my flat white is finished with perfect latte art but served with no eye contact. Or when I try to eat delicious food on a wobbly table. The experience is confusing. It’s this detached experience that’s the killer for overall perception of value – the potential of combining good product with good process isn’t realised.

Something I’ve always done at Sorrel and that I now do in the cafe is sit for five minutes in every seat. I give myself all the customer experiences possible. I do it every other week and often I’ll notice something that I didn’t the last time.

What can I see? Is there a messy stash of cleaning products behind the bar? Am I staring at a blank wall? What can I feel? Is the chair seat too hard? Is the plant next to me annoying? What can I hear? Is the sound of the coffee making overbearing? Is the speaker above too loud? An environment isn’t static – it’s always changing, and you only know these things if you regularly take a moment at every seat in the space.

Understanding the needs of your customer doesn’t get much more literal than physically sitting in their seat. More symbolic, interpretive, nuanced, is a menu. And there’s an added challenge here – the extent to which you know your audience is fully exposed on a menu, there’s no hiding.

I spent a few years running a pub in which we served a fine dining-inspired menu, which was wrong. It was too ambitious, too complex. Dishes had pops of acidity, surprising flavours. We braised the lamb shoulder with anchovy to create an unexpected sharpness. We were making our guests think. Really, we should’ve been doing the opposite.

Pub food doesn’t need to challenge you, it needs to comfort you. Hearty soup, rich lasagne, rice pudding - comfort food is comforting because it doesn’t need you to engage your brain. All you know is that every mouthful is the same and you want more. You clean the plate, there’s never enough.

I didn’t appreciate what people really want from a pub. Washing down fish and chips with a lager makes sense. Sipping a stout while you tuck into roast duck with a cherry reduction doesn’t. The experience was confusing.

If you put yourself in the shoes of your customers, you understand what’s working and what's not. Prioritising the details holds everything together so that the offer feels coherent, consistent and compelling.

Read the full article in the launch issue of The Assembly Journal, here.