Seaside café mocks coffee snobs with a ‘no nonsense’ list of simplified orders – but sparks a debate over its accuracy
- A cafe in Poole, Dorset, came up with a solution for confusing coffee options
- They had swapped flat white for ‘white coffee’ and a latte for a ‘milky coffee’
- Coffee aficionados failed to see the lighthearted tone and hit back on Reddit
A Dorset cafe has mocked coffee snobs with a ‘no nonsense’ list of simplified orders.
The sign outside the unnamed eatery in Sandbanks, Poole, swapped widely-used coffee names like flat white, latte and mocha for more straightforward descriptions like ‘white coffee’, ‘milky coffee’ and ‘choccy coffee’.
A snap of the tongue-in-cheek blackboard sparked widespread debate after it was shared by a tourist on Reddit thread CasualUK – with some coffee aficionados left unimpressed by the cafe owner’s light-hearted approach.
A tourist spotted the sign in Poole and posted in on Reddit where many coffee snobs began debating over its accuracy
The chalkboard sits outside with the title ‘No nonsense coffee guide, hot drinks menu’.
Crossing out the name of cappuccino they replace it with ‘frothy coffee’, and Americano with ‘black coffee’.
While some recognised the mocking humour, others were less than happy about the the incorrect way the coffee would be made when matched with the names.
‘I don’t want my coffee made by people who don’t understand coffee,’ fumed one.
‘Mate I’d be fuming if I asked for a flat white and they gave me a white americano’, raged another.
One said: ‘Jesus. Be like going to a restaurant with a menu that reads “Bird meat. Land animal meat. Sea meat. Vegetables”.’
Some were horrified that the cafe would ruin the complicated nature of coffee-making and said they had given themselves a rule about buying coffee in polystyrene cups
Some confessed that they had no clue about the differences between coffees until they’d seen the sign but some said it wasn’t even accurate.
‘Honestly I had no idea what the difference was with all of them until this thread and I tend to buy a decent amount of coffee (admittedly from chains).
‘The confusing thing is that this was a pretty lighthearted joke and the whole thread is people being like “well this isn’t artisan coffee lul” but it’s not advertising itself like that anyway.
‘I don’t think anyone reads that sign and actually thinks it’s as simple as what they’ve wrote, ya know. It’s just a joke,’ pointed out one person.
The thread quickly descended into debate about how exactly each coffee style was made and why the alternative names were wrong
Explaining what goes into making each coffee one said: ‘The velvety way the milk is prepared and the extraction of the shot is what sets it apart from other drinks. I don’t get why they’d explain it like a latte when not one component matches.
‘I mean, the s*** that comes out of their machine which they label a flat white might be similar to a latte, but a flat white made by a barista is isn’t.’
Another reasoned: ‘I have a rule now where I don’t get coffee in anywhere that has polystyrene cups. Been burnt too many times. Also that s*** is bad for the environment.’