Kill the 4 Season Menu & “Seasonal”
Hello everyone, at the time of writing I need to rebrand our website and it’s driving me nuts, but not today. Today I’m drinking my third coffee at my third coffee shop and trying to catch a movie so I must be to the point! I think I’ve got the energy/speed for it.
WE WANT TO BE LITERALLY “SEASONAL”
This is all part of a greater rebrand blog that’s on the way, but the gist is, we’re leaning in to Florida produce and all our colorful weirdness, away from bottled “natural flavors” and away from “grey box drive through” drinks. With that comes a little more effort to source and process the produce, more transparency and holding ourselves to the standard of knowing where our food comes from. To give an example:
AUTHENTIC FLORIDA SUNSHINE is our new motto, and so right now we’re buying oranges and dehydrating them in house. We’re making our own chocolate, cold brew, vanilla, oat milk, and orange puree to bring you a drink that we’re happy to talk about.
BUT FLORIDA SEASONS ARE WEIRD
You all know this, we’ve got long summers and short winters, last year we barely had a winter at all. It goes from 90 to 40/50 in December and lasts through March or April? then it rains like crazy. What is that? It’s great for plants!
When it’s hot for 8 months we’ve got all sorts of fresh berries and melons, when it’s not we get extra sweet oranges, carrots, tomatoes. Then it floods and it all grows back. It rocks. We can grow a heck of a lot in the sunshine state, probably most of what you can imagine that grows in the US. As good as we have it, it’s not an even 3 month split. SO if we need a month to plan a seasonal menu, we make compromises.
LAST YEAR WE FINALLY DID PERSIMMONS
This was our third year trying to get persimmons, there are a couple of you-pick farms around here but they didn’t have anything until late September/Early October. We waited and waited, pushing back our last two menus before giving up. This year we had a farmer friend who got some from a family farm in Georgia that were a real pain to process. Very tannin heavy, slimy, mealy fruit. So she was able to can them with some lemon juice and warming spices in a way that worked for the season, but if we could have waited a little longer they may have been ripe, local and delicious.
We couldn’t push pumpkin spice season in to deep October, and we couldn’t delay our honey moon which was planned to run that whole month. So it happened early and we couldn’t even use it for a drink. It ended up being the base for our chia pudding before quietly disappearing into the ether. This thing that held up our entire menu for a month!! Ahh!!!
MENU DROPS ARE BIG IN COFFEE WORLD
As I just alluded to, pumpkin spice season is huge, but even more than that the marketing around menu drops is a big deal! They reliably bring in new customers and people ask about when the next one is coming every day. The problem is, if you live somewhere like Florida that doesn’t really grow let’s say apples in fall, even if you buy them in season your locals don’t have a genuine connection to fresh cider or candy apples.
Sure people want pumpkin spice season to be back, but when it’s still genuinely 100* outside in October, it’s hard to be authentic about presenting it.
SO WE AXED THE SEASONAL DROP
Then created a brewery style board where we could put stuff up whenever we want.
We won’t be stuck with a seasonal drop that’s 3 months long, and we won’t be forced to put it out early to meet a deadline.
We have the freedom to bring in some fresh strawberries and do something creative with them. Now we’ve gotta make the systems work.
We’ll still carry pumpkin in fall or maybe use local sweet potatoes, we’ll still have some staples like the pistachio cardamom that don’t use local nuts. It’s going to be a mix of what we know we can do and us trying to do better.
LONG LIVE THE SEASONAL BOARD
The seasonal board will let us improve as we go on sourcing and execution, it’ll let us apply kitchen skills and have more conversations about food.
The seasonal board is the future - Elias
