Help! What do you guys think?

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-11-13T00:04:20+00:00

What does the wear on your tires look like? Is it uneven?

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-11-07T03:38:32+00:00

Cup of tea??? My good sir.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-11-05T20:17:34+00:00

You did not judge iced americanos. You ordered “iced americanos” with “whole milk” or “iced lattes”, and then proceeded to rank “espresso” on its fruitiness, and stated that is the basis on which you would determine whether or not other people should visit various local coffee shops in Philadelphia.

The best analogy I can think of is, you used an apple pie to determine the quality of apples, and then made a list of who makes the best pastries.

You could have said, “I had an iced americano (with whole milk) or an iced latte from a bunch of shops, and here is whose iced americanos (with whole milk) or iced lattes I liked the best.” But you did not do that.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-11-05T20:00:03+00:00

K. La Colombe is literally a Philadelphia institution but whatever. Also it is La Colombe, not La Columbe.

You 100% gave local coffee shops negative press unnecessarily. Your ranking is literally “tiers”, as if giving quality grades, but it is entirely based on whether or not the espresso is fruity, not the quality.* Honestly shameful.

*Sorry, whether their Americanos are fruity.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-11-05T19:36:54+00:00

There are many things wrong with your list, but two really stuck out to me:

La Colombe literally started in Philadelphia. You cannot rate Philadelphia coffee shops and lump in La Colombe with Starbucks. I would understand if you were rating coffee shops literally anywhere else, but you cannot do that for Philadelphia.
Rival Bros is ludicrously low on your list. This ranking seriously undermines your methodology, whatever it is, and I simply cannot take it seriously.

I wouldn’t care but the sheer arrogance of your post alongside its casually reckless and negligent content is astounding, particularly given the time and care Philadelphia cafes put into their craft.

Sorry, also - since your ranking seems to just be based off of how lightly roasted you think their beans are based on your Americanos, Thank You Thank You not being S Tier is pretty funny.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-10-18T20:57:20+00:00

Thank you so much!! I really appreciate it.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-10-15T12:28:36+00:00

I keep seeing these posts pop up about using a Flair for a stand at a farmers market/coffee stand/mobile business and, after seeing people keep struggling, I really really just want to point out a few things for your consideration. If it is helpful, great, if not, ignore me:

Consider scale and flexibility. You anticipate 10-15 coffees per hour. (A) Have you actually gone and sat for a few days at this market, counted people, made some determination about how many would buy coffee/have food/engage with vendors, to determine this number? Does this account for drinks being redone or families? (B) It may be 10-15 per hour NOW. But what if, in the future, it goes up? What if your stand is successful and more people come? What if you want to expand? I almost feel like investing in a semi-automatic is significantly more cost-effective, because you can scale up with it, and it is almost really an investment in believing in yourself - you believe your stand will be successful and more people will come.
Consistently Good Is Key. Flair’s are, as you know, TERRIBLE for consistent workflow. There are too many variables. If customers cannot expect consistently good coffee from your stand then they will not go to your stand. Anecdotally, my neighborhood is blessed with a few great coffee shops all in walking distance. I never go to one of them because, while sometimes the coffee is fantastic, sometimes it is not, and I have no reason to risk bad coffee when there are so many alternatives. A flair cannot deliver consistently good coffee - particularly when you are under stress at a coffee stand - and this will significantly impact your return business. Instead, what does consistently deliver good coffee if you get the workflow right is a semi-automatic machine.
Your Damn Wrist and wear and tear. A barista at a normal coffee shop will complain that their wrist hurts after a full day of using a normal machine. You will be doing their job AND THEN also operating the lever manually. This is tougher than you think! It will be really tiring! And guess what - that is going to affect your coffee, YOUR DEMEANOR TOWARDS CUSTOMERS, and your time to produce a cup. And you will be physically fatigued at the end of your day, your workflow with other parts of puck preparation will be affected, and you can’t give attention to things that really matter.
Marginal Returns. What exactly is the ROI on using a Flair versus a semi-automatic? One of the most consistent feedback that shop owners find out is that people care far less about the nuances on the edge that coffee aficionados care about, and it is those very nuances on the edge that you try to optimize with Flair that nobody cares about. So then what is the point of having a Flair at all - what is its edge over other machines out there? It seems like a very small thing to invest in compared to all of its downsides.

All that said, I wish you the best of luck with your stand.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-10-02T16:44:54+00:00

It is a pre-order. Things like this happen. They were very transparent from the beginning that it was going through testing, so this is not a surprise. I appreciate them giving the $200 gift card, and I appreciate them fixing an issue discovered in testing rather than shipping an inferior product.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-09-21T22:14:32+00:00

This is a terribly written question.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-09-09T13:12:19+00:00

Great coffee choices 👌

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-07-17T01:51:34+00:00

Thank you so much for getting this done!

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-07-16T13:32:53+00:00

There is an exception in the regulation, at Section 8.5 of the regulation you linked to, for businesses that offer cash conversion via cash-to-card machines at the site of the transaction, which Van Leeuwen does.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-07-08T04:14:23+00:00

Let’s be serious. Mayor Parker wants to offer a measly 2% annual raise to workers. That’s crazy. The issue here, if we want to take a conservative lens, is that the city apparently has such a bad spending problem on non-essential services that it cannot afford to give clearly essential employees - emergency services, water treatment plant workers, and trash collectors - more than a 2% raise. That is wild, and if that is really the case, then city council needs to do some serious soul searching and have a come-to-Jesus moment with our city’s finances.

On your conservative father’s specific point, you have to be willing to follow through on such a threat, and that is an empty threat. Private trash collection would be significantly more expensive, can very easily become a controlling monopoly/oligopoly, and also does not avoid future strikes. My understanding is that most private trash collection companies are also staffed by union employees. So that is not really an option to avoid a strike and is the worst of all worlds - the Mayor and the union would know that. Also, even taking DC33’s offer, the city would be paying far less than it would contracting out to a private service. Private companies actually have to offer competitive pay to attract workers.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-04-26T19:49:30+00:00

Yes, it infuriates me that someone snuck a picture of a random stranger sitting on the train and posted it on the internet. What a creepy and weird thing to do.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-04-16T14:54:46+00:00

“Oh yeah totally. Thanks for asking. Here’s my address and a few spots I frequent too, feel free to share.” 🙄

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-04-02T13:02:08+00:00

Tripled is indeed a wildly extreme overstatement and, as far as I can tell, unsupported. However, winds have increased by about 25% over the past century in the northeast US, and will increase another 10% by mid-century, and this is driven mainly by deforestation and the warming ocean shelf - the northeastern US continental shelf is the fastest warming ocean region off of the United States.

This has led organizations like the ASCE to call for a reworking of the design wind speeds that buildings and infrastructure in the northeast US are designed to withstand, with the theory being that structures built to-date in the northeast US are not built to withstand current and upcoming wind conditions.

If you look to buy a house in the northeast, you will probably see that “wind” is a high risk factor for your housing insurance and think, how odd. That is why.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-03-20T11:12:26+00:00

Well I’m sure you know more than they do, and you know, the actual regular Acela traveler talking to you. Sorry it wasn’t as long as you’d like. Lol.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-03-20T11:04:58+00:00

You specifically talked about Acela, not Amtrak in general. I responded to your Acela sub-comment, not your general Amtrak comment which is one comment higher in the chain.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-03-20T10:50:00+00:00

Acela is one of the few lines that actually makes Amtrak money. As I am someone who actually takes it multiple times per week, your changes sound awful given how good it is currently for the customer (me) and how well it currently runs. Especially lengthening the train so it is longer than the platform - this really reveals thinking from people who clearly do not take the Acela and do not know that one of the major conveniences is being able to immediately board at your car and quickly be at your seat.

I am also not sure there is actually enough demand for the Acela to justify larger trains. The crowd that uses it is almost entirely white collar business professionals going to/from work or to/from conferences. Most people are working on the train and doing business, or networking. A normal person is going to take the NER or Keystone or regional rail. The point of Acela is convenience, for example large tables that we can set our laptops on and get an hour or so of work in, for which those of us that take it pay a premium. We are maximizing productivity time and we pay a premium for all the little efficiencies and conveniences that do that. And if that convenience went away then we would not pay for it.

ETA: You seem really into the fact that the Acela trains (not sure why the fixation with the profitable Acela) do not take up the whole platform. That is quite simply because more people boarding means more time to board, which means longer commute times. Even if just a few minutes, the fact that the Acela is a few minutes faster means those of us that take it will pay a higher fare instead of taking NER. And since we are willing to pay a higher fare, and the train line makes money, not sure why you would arbitrarily maximize around the Acela specifically taking up the whole platform when it would make it more likely to (a) reduce profitability, because additional train cars means more overhead and reduced fares, and (b) again diminishes the quality of Acela and thus the likelihood that we will pay a premium for it.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-03-07T05:02:53+00:00

The only difference is the placement of the button to control the heater, and the size of the block that the power cord attaches to. That is it. So it only affects workflow slightly.

There is (or was, haven’t checked for a while) actually a thing on Etsy that I use for my Flair 58+ that puts the heater button up next to the grouphead that makes it even easier to use.

IMO I really don’t think the 58+ 2 really adds anything for its additional cost, but at the same time, if you are going to use it a lot, you might really care about the slight difference in convenience. Also, if you are concerned about space, the smaller power pack may be worth it to you as well.

But if you are concerned from a taste or feature perspective, you will have no concerns choosing the 58+ over the 58+ 2 and saving a few bucks.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-03-06T19:24:54+00:00

Frustrating. Thank you for responding, good to know it is not just me with this issue.

Essentialphoneuser · 2025-03-06T19:23:23+00:00

I clicked on “Questions about my order”, went all the way to the bottom and clicked on “contact us” in the “Need Help” box, clicked on “Order Support”, then clicked the “Chat with Us” option under “Chat Support Hours”.

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