A tasteless cafe latte
“Do you want your caffe latte with taste?”
“Can I get it without taste?”
“Of course, but for only five kroner extra, you have it with taste.”
That was a snippet of a rather bizarre conversation I had recently in an Oslo cafe. I was rather puzzled by what a tasteless cafe latte may be: with a swirly straw perhaps. Maybe with a colourful umbrella. But after some further interrogation, I realised that the word the waitress was looking for was flavour. A small difference in word, but a huge difference in meaning. She was referring too flavoured sirups, but even with the correct word, the question still needs a little polishing to get the actual meaning right.
This wasn’t some out of the way cafe in the suburbs that wasn’t used to foreigners. It was on the main drag, two minutes walk from where the tourist boats dock - and with a clear view of the royal castle. Which made me think - perhaps special English courses designed just for waiting staff would be a good idea. If you know of any, let me know and I’ll pass the details onto the cafe in question.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
So which ‘taste’ did you go for in the end Dan? Personlly, I’m an iced coffee with caramel (no cream) girl.
BTW, the Starbucks website (www.starbucks.com) has a feature called ‘Got a great idea?’ where they have created an enormous online community where they’re discussing things like:
> recycling cups
> being able to buy someone a coffee remotely (like Facebook’s boozemail, except you actually do get a drink by printing out a confirmation email with a barcode)
> loyalty cards
> coffee icecubes
The best thing is that you can vote on your favourite ideas, and you can see which ones Starbucks have implemented (or are under review etc.). Cool huh?
Not sure if that would work for Eye for Image, but we have introduced a new service recently based on a customer idea: the Klippekort. This has been extremely popular (and certainly keeping us all busy over the summer!). So I guess it doesn’t matter what size compay you are, it pays to really listen to your customers!
P.S. ‘too’ in the second paragraph should be ‘to’. Sorry, I just can’t switch myself off!
July 8th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I actually went for the taste-free latte. Not a great choice in retrospect.
PS. Thanks for pointing out the spelling error…and I can see you’ve made one too
I guess this is a good example of why we always have at least two writers working on a job.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I ordered a “large latte” in a Starbucks in central Zürich last week and was given a large glass of warm milk. Although I was in the German speaking part of the country, Italian is still an official language and of course “latte” doesn’t mean foamy, milky espresso in Italian… it means “milk” and only “milk”. So despite “latte” essentially meaning coffee in most of the world, even in Starbucks here you have to order “latte macchiato” to receive some caffeine too.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Oh.. my actual point was that someone working in a Starbucks by Zürich train station serving an English speaking person should at least question what was meant by the order.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Strange that large latte translated in ‘warm’ milk. I lived in Sicily for a year, and as far as I remember, in Italian latte does not mean warm milk. It just means milk. So they assumed you wanted it warm…but didn’t assume you wanted caffeine in it. Perhaps you looked really quite perky already. Or were you in pyjamas?