What should be the goal?

I've seen signs in the area advertising the Beaver Valley's "best" or "finest" coffees and tea lately. I am not a fan of these sorts of marketing tactics. Partly because I believe that calling yourself the best is the worst thing that can happen to a coffee business. Partly because calling yourself the "-est", whatever the first morpheme, is the worst thing that can happen. If you call yourself the best, you've got nothing left to do, nowhere else to go, no way to improve; so if someone dislikes your (and the industry's) "best", then they certainly aren't going to give credence to anyone or anything lower on the totem pole. Which means a possible fellow worker in improving coffee has been lost, possibly forever. And this is putting aside the question of who has the authority to determine "bestness".

One of the genius moments of the "third wave of coffee" is that consumer education is a major emphasis. No assuming that the customer is ignorant or that the coffee professional is knowledge incarnate. Both are learners and rely on each other. Usually the emphasis with coffee education tends to be on understanding origin, supply chains, and brewing method. I would like to offer one other aspect for consideration: improvement. Forget "best", getting better is where it is at.

If I'm best (at anything), then I am always in the defensive. If I'm getting better, then my main competition isn't others, trying to keep them off the top of the hill, but rather myself, trying to push harder for my own betterment and the betterment of others, whether customers or fellow professionals. So the goal cannot be "be the best" (as if there are any objective standards to follow at any rate), but "be better today than we were yesterday". If you see that here at BFC&T, whether in the quality of our drinks, or our roast, or our service, then we have done it right. If you don't see that, please help us improve because we believe that there is a responsibility, a gift, given to us from farmer to drinker, and we want to respect that gift.

Updatus 3/8/08:

If you get a chance, read Luke's comment to this post. He says, much more concisely, what I was trying to say, albeit through a frustrated haze. It is the self-proclamation of "bestness" that gets my goose. Striving for bestness, or betterment, is what it is all about. Thanks again Luke.