Seeing Forests

So, I took the liberty of scanning all 280 reviews on Yelp about Cafe Grumpy in the Google announcement on descriptive terms in local search. The terms showcased in the post included, cup of coffee, no laptop, latte, great coffee, and french lemon ginger. Eliminating the “entailed” terms for a coffee shop - cup of coffee, latte, and great coffee, we’re left with no laptop and french lemon ginger. Kudos on the no laptop as that’s clearly a differentiator (you pick on which way you want to go with it). But the scan told me that, yes, these people craft artisanal coffee, they sell expensive coffee ($12 for the top-of-the-line), it’s got a Portland atmosphere, the place is usually crowded, with occasionally long queues, is frequented by a hip crowd, but apparently features preparation using Clover machines, whatever those are. Didn’t see a single mention of french lemon ginger. Now, admittedly, this is a grossly unfair counterpoint on my part. I’m a human, after all (well, working on being one). But there did seem to jump out a lot of things that might rightly be more relevant for the coffee connoisseur (like the Clover thing) that I’m certain would have been mentioned in any of the other sources for le Cafe even without cross-referencing to a richer, more human way of characterizing a coffee shop. Still, it’s a start.

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