Running an online business means you can never seem to get time off - we work weekends and public holidays throughout the year because our product is all about freshness - we are not unique or special as it's precisely the same for bakers, fishermen and dairy.
This never-ending cycle goes round and round.
So, we pick just 3 or 4 days a year at Xmas when we know that shipping providers have ground to a halt so we can have our brief break.
We can't drive far or fly anywhere because most of the time spent in transit means you can't easily relax; hence, we pick somewhere close and try to enjoy just a few days in luxury.
The new RACV Cape Schanck resort seemed like an ideal destination. In past years, we have enjoyed their Torquay resort - it's reachable within a reasonable time, and the extensive breakfast buffet fits my idea of nirvana - food-induced coma from too many plates of bacon, eggs, hash-browns and sausages that defy the Heart Foundation's tick of approval.
However, the coffee setup always caught my attention more than the smoked salmon, and once again, incompetent and short-sighted corporate decision-making ruined it for me.
Accustomed to regular streams of caffeine in my blood, separated from my beloved La Marzocco GS3 and Mazzer Kony-E, the onset of an irritating caffeine-deprived headache is apparent.
As an early riser, I'm accustomed to downing double shots before 5 am, so by the time breakfast rolls around in the Cape restaurant, my testy demeanour is well and truly justified - don't stand between me and the coffee dispenser.
Like all hotels these days, the RACV shares a common laziness and disdain for quality coffee. Plonk down a Nespresso system, and they close their eyes and imagine all coffee problems are magically solved.
Offer an extra charge coffee option over the price of the expensive $600 per night room charge, and that entitles the hotel to a "get out of jail" card if the Nespresso system fails to meet a customer's expectation for basic coffee quality.
The problem is, of course, that the paid-for option was an even crappier stale Italian supermarket brand that was hideous in our ristretto-deprived state.
As I did at the Torquay resort, I studied the Nespresso solution and how consumers interacted.
They set up 2 of those large commercial Nespresso stations, each with dual extraction features and a single milk dispenser.
These use the bigger, flying saucer-shaped commercial capsules that contain more grams of coffee per capsule than the consumer "classic" capsule. You know, the units they use at car dealerships in the sales area when they try to make you sign a new car contract, not the instant available in the service department waiting for your car to be finished.
First up, users are presented with a symbolic clock-style circle with about a dozen options in capsule choices.
With vague colour association and a square Japanese-style bento box segmenting the various capsules, it wasn't easy to select your desired capsule. However, the shades of green and brown looked similar under the subdued lighting, and hence, I made a few wrong choices at times not wearing my reading glasses.
What amused me the most was the line-up queue behind each machine - the look of desperation on the faces of the customers desiring a decent coffee hit - maybe it was the Xmas tipples the night before that caused grimaces so early in the morning.
Punters would wait patiently for their turn as they moved to the front of the queue only to be confronted with that damn circle of choices - oh dear, pausing to read each option and somehow work out which capsule they wanted by using the nonsensical strength bar indicator, needless to say, it takes ages (in coffee depravity time) people tossing up the pros and cons of each capsule before deciding then they had to find it in the square box would be a lot easier if the box were shaped like the symbols in the display instead of playing the game of matching colours with the chart which rarely was successful and staff filling more capsules at rapid speed into any random chamber of the box.
For a seasoned coffee pro like me, I only cared about a maximum hit, e.g., gimme strength bars off the scale! Having found these intense capsules that appeared to be the most virulent, I proceeded to brew cups for myself and my darling wife Dianne, careful not to over-extract and introduce bitter taints, or so I thought.
Then it came to milk time as there was no way I was downing this baby jet black - my coffee nose is deceptively strong at 50 paces, and even these trained nostrils could detect the hint of leather in that cup.
I also don't have the time or personal resolve to weather the wrath of rolling eyes and silent sighs of the people waiting impatiently behind me, so I'm a good boy, making sure to get in and out fast.
The froth was visually impressive, but the temperature was tepid and disgusting. So, what to do can't heat it; suppose we have to skull these suckers immediately.
The taste of robusta dominated the cup - my fault; I chose the highest strength. Notes of wood, tar, old boot leather and cloves were all I could muster in my hung-over, caffeine-deprived state.
I didn't mind as long as the headache was avoided, but Dianne could be quite snobbish with coffee, and she refused to drink hers after the first tentative sip.
Despite plenty of encouragement from me, there was no way she would cop this Nescrappo experience.
With my extensive knowledge of coffee, I soon entered the queue a second time and tried to select another capsule that was less about my garage boots and more about refined, delicate sweetness.
Using the impeccable logic of going down in the strength scale to something less "abrasive" might make the Princess Bride happy again; it was Guatemala as the only capsule Dianne could consume - albeit under duress.
The queue at the Nespresso station seemed to be constant - just like the freeways slowing at the on/off ramps, customers became immediately confused with capsule choices, and the systems often ran out of milk or had lights flashing, which I could not decipher from a distance. Still, staff members tended to these stations like a mother with her 1st born child.
I can drink barely warm coffee, but many people simply can't. The Nespresso system failed to produce anything resembling hot coffee.
I got to thinking about how people can accept this daily - having been around cafes for a long time, in the old days, it was often that customers would return to the counter and complain the coffee was not "hot enough" despite a strange odour from over-heated milk - particularly some of the beloved older folks must have their coffee nuclear hot, a hangover from drinking instant straight from a boiling kettle!.
Batch brew coffee technology has come a long way from the days of the old-school percolator and drip systems.
A decent coffee will taste incredible in a percolator or filter system - far superior to that milk-based cool slurry from a Nespresso system.
Why hotels think they can get away with the lazy Nespresso system is beyond me - they probably argue it's about labour efficiency and providing customers with choices.
It's acceptable for some guests, but for those who savour the morning coffee ritual, it's akin to having your day ruined before it's even started - yearning to escape the facility like a prisoner to seek freedom in the hands of a professional barista.
The effort put in to keep those Nespresso stations running was relatively similar, if not more, than a decent batch brew solution, and let's not think about the huge issue of environmental waste from those crappy capsules.
No doubt the cost-benefit ratio needed to be better considered by management, or they took the safe option and followed everyone else like sheep.
It's a real shame RACV wasted a prime opportunity to differentiate from the many other expensive restaurants that think they can fool customers by relegating coffee to an afterthought.
When so much emphasis is placed on the ingredients, they cook in the restaurant, limiting food miles by sourcing locally. Yet, they drop the ball horrendously on coffee whilst charging ultra premiums for the privilege.
At least decent batch brew coffee is drinkable black, but 93% of coffee drinkers can't do without their froth.
Only the Nespresso systems can deliver this tepid frothy solution with a basic economy and speed permitted by the hotel's accountants - it's a sad joke using coffee from the other side of the world whilst simultaneously promoting local produce and claiming to care about the environment in almost every design element of the new resort.
It's all about the illusion of premium and never about the stark realities of real quality.
I now bring either a stovetop or Nespresso-compatible capsules.
Disclaimer:- yes, we roast our coffees for Nespresso-compatible "classic" capsules.
To avoid conflicts of interest, please note that our mycuppa Nespresso-compatible "classic" capsules are unsuitable for the commercial dispensing systems used at RACV resorts.
