It only signals to me that they have other priorities.
If they can barely do that, then I'm sure they're slacking off on more stuff too.
The overlap in skills between photographing your product and being a great barrista aren't obviously overlapping.
The takeaway seems to be to remove images from the menu.
The coffee still tastes like a Victorian chimney sweeper's piss.
I don’t actually care about the menu or sign. It’s a coffee drink and I’ve had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of them. I know what I like and if it’s just stencil letters pinned on a cork board I don’t care. I just want to grab a coffee and go.
A shop with no pictures, just words? Sends a message that their coffee is probably good enough to speak for itself. Fine.
A shop with hand drawn lettering, ornate art? The coffee is probably made by people who care about their craft in some fashion. At least the person making my coffee probably enjoys their job a little. Fine.
Fully AI menu with gen Ai modeled drink pictures? The drink isn’t going to look like that. There is obviously no effort made here. They spent time to create a generic menu my kids could have put together. Worst of the lot, to be honest.
How much might it cost to have someone local show up and produce a decent-looking chalkboard display?
IDK, you own a business and do this sort of stuff and all sorts of red flags go off for me.
They do slack off on cleaning the chairs and the decor, that’s for sure. The coffee though is phenomenal.
What if they use a machine grinder instead of a hand grinder?
Yes, priorities other than their business.