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Using AI to make a sign is likely a pretty good indicator as to the effort the owner puts into other aspects of their business.
by seattle_spring 16d ago
Using AI to make a sign is likely a pretty good indicator as to the effort the owner puts into other aspects of their business.
- orangedog 16d agoIt only signals to me that they have other priorities.
- Draiken 16d agoCorrect, but they own a coffee shop, they aren't building rockets. The menu is definitely a significant part of it. If they can barely do that, then I'm sure they're slacking off on more stuff too.
- JumpCrisscross 16d ago> The menu is definitely a significant part of it The overlap in skills between photographing your product and being a great barrista aren't obviously overlapping. The takeaway seems to be to remove images from the menu.
- asdff 16d agoYou think this is a signal of some great barista?
- mixedCase 16d agoStarbucks has an amazingly polished corporate image and at least where I'm from the locales have great wall art done by local artists presented alongside tasteful decor and a minimalistic but well cared for choice of furniture that I can't honestly give it no less than a 9/10 presentation. The coffee still tastes like a Victorian chimney sweeper's piss.
- YeGoblynQueenne 15d agoH... how do you know?
- bothers 15d ago[dead]
- jackb4040 16d agoAs a customer yes, I would have vastly higher confidence in the quality of a coffee shop with no pictures vs one that uses AI slop.
- mixedCase 16d agoWhy?
- mingus88 15d agoI’m not GP but this hits for me so I’ll reply in good faith I don’t actually care about the menu or sign. It’s a coffee drink and I’ve had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of them. I know what I like and if it’s just stencil letters pinned on a cork board I don’t care. I just want to grab a coffee and go. A shop with no pictures, just words? Sends a message that their coffee is probably good enough to speak for itself. Fine. A shop with hand drawn lettering, ornate art? The coffee is probably made by people who care about their craft in some fashion. At least the person making my coffee probably enjoys their job a little. Fine. Fully AI menu with gen Ai modeled drink pictures? The drink isn’t going to look like that. There is obviously no effort made here. They spent time to create a generic menu my kids could have put together. Worst of the lot, to be honest.
- orangedog 16d agoIt was just a replacement for those temporary chalkboard menus, the person wo did that previously left. Perhaps she has bad taste but that doesn't mean she was slacking off. Did they spend a lot of time on the chalkboard menus previously?
- ssl-3 16d agoJust printing this item was reported in the article as costing $150. How much might it cost to have someone local show up and produce a decent-looking chalkboard display?
- skupig 16d agoThis is what people are actually mad about when businesses use AI art. You claim to live in an artistic community, great, ask your staff if they have any friends who draw who want to come by and make a quick $100. You spent more money on a worse result that alienates your community.
- Draiken 16d agoHonestly, I'd rather have a word printed doc for the menu than this. It's not that difficult, doesn't require any skills and doesn't take any time. IDK, you own a business and do this sort of stuff and all sorts of red flags go off for me.
- quietsegfault 15d agoMy coffee shop barely has a menu. None of the current roasts are listed anywhere, you have to ask and they change daily. No signage. It’s consistently the best coffee I’ve had. Not fussy but very very good. They do slack off on cleaning the chairs and the decor, that’s for sure. The coffee though is phenomenal.
- throw2836463 15d agoWhere do you draw the line? Is buying already roasted coffee beans a sign they are slacking off instead of roasting it themselves? What if they use a machine grinder instead of a hand grinder?
- seattle_spring 15d ago> It only signals to me that they have other priorities Yes, priorities other than their business.
- sega_sai 16d agoUnless they use the time they previously spent making a sign into making a better coffee.
- jrflowers 16d agoHow would a coffee shop spend an hour making their coffee better Like you own a coffee shop and you’ve freed up one hour in the 12 weeks before you have to make a new sign, what do you do in that hour that makes the coffee better?
- sippingabonedry 16d agoSpending the money you would have wasted on a flaky local artist to draw an overpriced disposable sandwich board on better coffee beans. The entitlement is off the charts. The more I read this insanity, the more I hope she printed it at Walmart with a discount coupon.
- joquarky 15d agoThis is really repulsive. This kind of trolling makes me feel like donating to a local data center out of spite.
- fragmede 16d agoYes. It's a sign they spend a lot of effort making good coffee and don't have a lot of effort left over to work on a sign.
- krapp 16d agoThey own the business, they don't make the coffee, nor did they make the sign they had earlier.
- nrmitchi 16d ago> They own the business, they don't make the coffee You might not have spent a lot of time in the world of "small business", but this is hysterically out of touch.
- krapp 16d agoThe article literally mentions that they have baristas, one of whom was making the old menu because they were "aesthetically inclined." This can also be confirmed by looking at the employment section of their website. The owner was not personally either making or serving the coffee.
- phil21 15d agoI don't follow. Even a little bit. Every single small coffee shop owner I know has employees. They work alongside them and do every job in the shop along with them. They operate in shifts, sometimes the owner is there for both open and close. What does hiring a barista have to do with not making coffee yourself? Gonna go with the "hilariously out of touch" comment. These places rarely print money to the point an owner can be an absentee manager type.
- krapp 15d agoYou're pretending not to comprehend the simple concept of a barista. I can see you're not interested in a good faith conversation here. I'm not going to waste any more of my time. Feel free to keep on berating me if it makes you feel better.
- marssaxman 16d agoSeems to me it's an indicator that the owner cares more about making and serving food or drink than they do about advertising it. I'd feel differently if some big corporate chain were doing this, but if it's a little "mom & pop"/"hole in the wall" type place, cheap advertising is a neutral-to-positive signal.
- thrance 15d ago> Seems to me it's an indicator that the owner cares more about making and serving food or drink than they do about advertising it. Why? When you see a derelict pizzeria, you don't think "they must be devoting all their energy to making good pizzas!". Similarly, that a coffee shop owner uses AI for branding is a big signifier of their laziness or lack of attention to detail.
- marssaxman 15d agoIf I'm lining up to order from a shabby old school bus with a menu in the window written in sharpie on a piece of cardboard, I know I'm a couple minutes away from tucking into some banging tacos.
- quietsegfault 15d agoAbsolutely not. My local kebab shop 100% uses AI for their menus and signage. It’s delicious. He does not have time or the desire to worry about the provenance of the menus. It’s a pretty good indicator the owner bought a ChatGPT or Canva subscription, that’s about it.
- siliconpotato 15d agoI wonder if they worry about the provenance of their meat. Might be delicious but you might be eating horse.