Archive for the ‘customers’ Category

Bring your own cup for a Takeaway Discount

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

This is from a local office. I am told that this is a little under five days worth of cups between three. While impressive two things stand out to me. The first is that they are obviously awesome customers and for that I am grateful. Secondly, that is a lot of wasted resources. Like wow!

So as of tomorrow, if you bring your own cup we will give you a takeaway discount. In this way we can say thank you for being regular customers and see if we can’t reduce some of this waste. Common sense conditions apply.

Posted in customers, environment, local community, urban grind | 3 Comments »

Good day today.

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Today I was reminded of a few things. What goes around comes around. It is safe to trust people. And you can never judge a book buy it’s cover.

Took my son down to the local hardware today to get a few small things and upon reaching the counter I turned to Oscar, my son and exclaimed “Oh no I forgot my wallet!”. Instantly the guy in front of us said don’t worry I will pay for it. I didn’t hesitate and said thanks because the best advice ever given to me was to “Never deny someone the opportunity to give.” – Nigel Reed. David, the generous man in line told me how he had once filled his car with petrol, then at the counter realised he had no money only to be surprised by a women willing to pay the whole bill. He said that he is now always on the look out to keep paying such a kind act forward. It reminded me that when you do a good thing for a person or a bad thing against a person it gets multiplied which is why you should do good things. A random act of kindness really wakes something up in people I think and it will be a feeling they will want others to experience. If you have never seen the movie Pay it Forward I highly recommend it.

Earlier in the day I had another wonderful encounter with a customer that had returned to pay her bill after what must have been at least six weeks. I have a personal policy of trusting that if people don’t have the cash on them or they only have card I trust them and ask them to simply fix us up when it is next convenient for them. So far everyone has returned as far as I know as I don’t keep a record each time and I usually forget moments later that this person still ‘owes’ us. It’s a nice place to be in cause it kind of means for me that I get to live in a world where everyone is trust worthy and my personal theory goes that you can’t trust people if you never give them the opportunity to be trustworthy. I know some have abused this but that’s ok cause the percentage is so low that I could probably only name one person in nearly 8 years of Urban Grind. Anyway… six weeks ago I declared to my awesome (just as her she will tell you herself) assistant that this particular women has obviously scammed us and is never coming back. But such is life yadda yadda. She had been so vague the first time that she came into the shop and we just couldn’t work her out and I guess the experience made us wonder a bit as to what was going on and we started to get sus. Then she came up to pay and only had card, no cash and while I said sure just fix us up later I honestly thought that she was never coming back. I didn’t trust her. Today she walks in and I pretend I don’t remember her, but I do and she asks for a coffee and would like to fix up her bill from last time she was in Brisbane. How is that the first time I am so sure I couldn’t trust someone I am wrong. So I get talking to her cause now she’s cool you know, I trust her and I can treat her like everyone else (I just called myself a tosser so you don’t need to) and she mentions that she doesn’t come into the cities much or something like that and now I am getting the sense that maybe her being a bit vague was actually her way of just finding her way around slowly. She has actually been so patient the first time that she waited like 20 minutes for the line to die down before ordering. Maybe I can go easy on myself for thinking that is strange as so many people these days are impatient and pressed for time.

This is not the first time that I have found that it only takes about a maximum of 2 questions to start to get to know someone. If you think you know someone on sight, inquire, you will be so wrong unless you are gifted. I once thought one of my customers once was an obvious bum until I asked he once what he does and it turns out he was a retired physics professor in a field that I had never heard of and these days he just likes to tent to his garden. Speak to people, they have stories that will out do your assumptions.

Posted in customers, friends, inspiring, local community, peace, personal, urban grind | 4 Comments »

Plastic Bottles – did you know?…

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Wow. The plastic bottles in our oceans issue really is so much worse than I thought it could be. I imagined bottles floating around that could simply be retrieved and cleaned up. Not so. Empty bottles sink, bottle tops float, wildlife feeds the plastic to their young, fish ingest the breaking down particles and the problem is considered to already be so bad that it may never be able to be cleaned up. Now usually I try to err on the side of positive news but I had to ask myself, ‘Am I contributing to this? Is Australia?’ At first I didn’t think so, but Urban Grind sells plastic bottles. We do sell one bottle made from BioPlastics that will compost, but that is only one of many otherwise plastic bottles that won’t break down anytime soon.

At Christmas we were in Byron Bay for the day. And I swear to you that I have never seen a plastic bottle left on the beach (I may not get to the beach enough though) but on the beach at Byron it was littered with bottles. Surely this is caused by tourists but after learning what I know now about the issue it is simply not cool for it to be happening. So bottles on the beach will make it to the ocean, and as they say, ‘All drains lead to the ocean’ so littering in any sense in not acceptable.

In the short TED video above you can get a well presented overview of the situation. So what am I going to do about it? Well, first things first, I need to personally stop buying plastic. I also plan to remove plastic bottles from our shops drinks fridge by first contacting the drink companies and asking them to watch the video and let me know their position, and inform them that I am considering removing them from my fridge should they decide not to explore glass, bioplastics, or some other way of taking responsibility for the problem. I will also be contact Byron Shire Council with the same video, etc.

Please note that Urban Grind for over 7 years has always placed 100% of our plastic waste in the recycling bin. Which means that in milk bottles alone we have placed into recycling about 25,000 2lt bottles of milk. So think of it this way. Urban Grind is a little coffee shop and can produce that much milk bottle waste. I have worked in places that did not recycle their milk bottles and I still hear it from new staff about their old places of work never recycling a single bottle. Please check with your local coffee shop and find out if they recycle, and if not encourage them to do so. We all need to be considering how we are contributing to the global problem, that actually doesn’t effect us so much because most of the plastic floats away from Australia – how convenient (that’s a pun).

Posted in alternative media, customers, design, environment, urban grind, zeroWaste | No Comments »

Adam Sebastian West at Kiln

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Many Urban Grind customers probably know Adam Sebastian West as he has been hanging around for years. About 7 years now. He is a wonderful friend of mine and a great photographer. You can check out his photography on the Zenstick Website or this Friday night the 6th of March you can see his latest work as part of the Sea City Sky group exhibition at KILN Gallery. The show runs from the 6th – 29th of March. For more details check out www.kiln.com.au.

Posted in customers, friends, local community, personal | 1 Comment »

Parking Tips

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Parking in New Farm can be a bit tricky but there is more parking than you realise at first. Right on Brunswick St is actually when the best parking is. On the Urban Grind side of Brunswick St is when you will find the most parking. Just back towards the valley mall from Urban Grind there is parking for about 3 cars for 2 hours till 4pm. Also on Brunswick St in front of the IGA there is similar parking. But please do not park in the IGA car park unless you are shopping there. I do not advocate using their parking to visit Urban Grind New Farm. So I would try parking on Brunswick St before heading down Harcourt which can be much harder to find a park on. I hope this helps some people. See you soon.

Posted in customers, urban grind | No Comments »

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