You've dropped in for an espresso. Your own private barista greets you at the door and guides you to a custom-made, walnut-and-steel espresso-making station, tricked out with a swivel base and hydraulics for raising and lowering the attached grinder. Welded to its main compartment is a built-in, two-group machine, from which the barista pulls your shot. You take your cappuccino, grab a cushion from a stack and toss it onto the concrete, settling into the stadium seating at the back of the coffeehouse.
This is the caffeine-by-the-beach experience that Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea plans to debut when its new Venice location opens next month on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Doug Zell, owner of the Chicago-based coffee roaster, sees it as a testing ground for progressive coffeehouse ideas, designed "to bring down the barrier between customer and barista."
"The inspiration is almost like a salon where individual stations will be manned by one barista," says Kyle Glanville, who heads Intelligentsia's West Coast operations. "They customize the experience depending on how they like to work. You can be as high maintenance as you want to be and not have a line of people behind you."
In 2007, Intelligentsia established an L.A. presence at Silver Lake's Sunset Junction. Now Zell and Glanville, who has the title director of innovation, have set out to transform the former Scentiments flower shop on Abbot Kinney into a coffeehouse that strips away conventions.
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Removing barriers
They're doing away with the counter that comes between you and the barista. There are no cash registers; instead, each barista carries a Blackberry-like tablet so payment is possible anywhere in the store.
For each of the store's four Synesso stations, water and power conduits connect directly to each station from the ceiling. "There's a bit of a steampunk vibe," says Ana Henton, principal of Mass Architecture & Design. Mass developed station prototypes and coordinated with woodworkers, metalworkers, plumbers and electricians. An Intelligentsia technical specialist ensured the mechanics meshed with the espresso machines.
A console in the center of the coffeehouse hosts two Clover coffee makers, the five-figure machines that have made drip coffee hip, producing single cups with minimal sediment and clear flavor.
A coffee bar toward the back of the store will offer multiple brewing methods, including vacuum pots, Eva Solo, French press, manual drip and Chemex.
