Coffee soon?

Wake up and smell the margins

Coming up at Backstory

• Free live music every Thursday evening, 6pm-8pm

  No need to book, just turn up at our bar from 6pm on Thursday evenings

• Join Rachel Yoder at our Fiction Book Club - Nightbitch

  Tuesday 15th August, 8pm, Zoom

  A mother experiences a brilliantly unhinged transformation under the strain of family life. Join the fiction book club for £15 a month or just pay for this session.

• Ben Judah - This is Europe

  THIS WEDNESDAY, 16th August, 7.30pm, Backstory

  Tom's favourite non-fiction book of the year so far, ‘This is Europe’ is a masterful portrait of a continent, told through pen sketches of dozens of its ordinary citizens.

• SOLD OUT Live poetry at Backstory: Michael Pedersen and Hollie McNish

  Wednesday 30th August, 7.30pm, Backstory

  Two dazzling poets bring their words to life live at Backstory. Michael Pedersen will be reading from his new collection, ‘The Cat Prince,’ in conversation with Hollie McNish, author of ‘Slug’ and ‘Nobody Told Me.’

• Join Tim Marshall at our Non-fiction Book Club - The Power of Geography

  Thursday 31st August, 8pm, Zoom

  Tim Marshall, the bestseller who explains the world to us through its maps, joins us to talk about The Power of Geography. Join the non-fiction book club for £15 a month or just pay for this session.

Team pick of the week

Darby recommends: Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

One of my favourites of the year! In Family Lore, each of the women of the Marte family have a special gift. When Flor, who can sense when someone is going to die, tells her family that she wants to plan a living wake for herself, her sisters and her nieces have questions.

The story switches between the perspectives of the four sisters and the two nieces, as well as across time between childhoods in the Dominican Republic and adulthoods in New York City. It is character-driven and all about relationships, identity and family. It is also beautifully written, funny, and real - Darby

BARISTAS AND BARRISTERS have more in common than just a lot of the same letters (barristers, tellingly, repeating them). Both make an awful lot of noise and spend most of the day on their feet. Both like fancy words for mundane things (“conferences”, never meetings; “latte art”, not foamy squiggles). Most of all, though there is very good money to be made once you’ve mastered it — have I ever told you about the margins on coffee? — when you’re starting out, it’s one hell of a slog.

I think it’s fair to say that, until very recently, all of us on the Backstory team were a lot more confident in our bookselling abilities than our prowess as baristas. That isn’t surprising. I hired people on the basis of whether customers would enjoy chatting to them about books, not on their magical skills with a steam wand. For the first few months of being open, the most important thing was for us to master the basics of ordering books we didn’t have in stock, working the till, replenishing the shelves, making customers feel very welcome etc.

I thought coffee was an important part of the mix, but - despite those margins - it contributed much more to the vibe than to the bottom line. No matter how much profit you make per cup, you’d have to sell a hell of a lot of £2.95 Flat Whites to compete with a queue of customers lining up for £20 hardbacks. The bar is much more about deepening that sense of community you get in an independent bookshop, and about encouraging regulars to linger — and, you know, perhaps buy another book while they’re at it…

But there comes a time when you have to face up to what you’re not doing quite so well. Fortuitously enough, I can precisely pinpoint that time. It was the day of a visit back in May from everyone’s favourite restaurant critic, the Mayor of London. While signing stacks of his book at the bar on a busy Saturday morning, Mr Khan had ample opportunity to appraise my (pretty much self-taught) technique with grinder and espresso machine. And he was happy to share that I had room for improvement. So much so that he signed my colleague’s copy of his book with an instruction to “keep an eye” on me.

I, of course, took this book-trail joshing with an enormous pinch of salt. And promptly booked the whole team on a barista training course the next day.

Well, that was May. And this is August. We’ve now been on two courses. And my goodness, have I studied for the bar. Hours upon hours have been spent getting milk to just the right texture (“it should sound like ripping paper,” the trainer said, as if her audience was not a room of booksellers), working out the right mug size for a Flat White versus a Cappuccino and generally faffing about with foam.

Safe to say, it’s a work in progress. As those of you who have got to know him might expect, Rory is already at the stage where he can basically draw your favourite hieroglyph in your decaf oat latte. My “hearts” still range somewhere from PAC-MAN to “your dental scan has thrown up something alarming”.

But what we really need now is practice. Lots of practice. Which is where you can help. In our quest for everything we stock to have a bloody good backstory we’ve switched our beans from the perfectly serviceable stuff we served before to specialty coffee ethically sourced from independent farms in Brazil and roasted just down the road in Brixton and Norwood by Volcano Coffee Works. Better still, it’s delicious.

So why not come and try a cup? And, just as the Mayor asked, keep a good eye on our latte art. I promise not to break your heart.

Tom