Walk more than 400 meters from the west gate of Guangzhou Metro Line 1 to see the neon sign of "Palm Space".
In the afternoon, a lady sat in the doorway and rested, uninterrupted.
It's no different from a regular coffee shop, and you walk in with a coffee aroma mixed with the smell of wood. At 3 p.m. on weekdays, customers who come here to work and read books or negotiate business will blend in with the clerks into the quiet and light background music.
When I walked into the coffee shop and stood in front of the order counter for less than 10 seconds, the barista in front of me was keenly aware that a customer was coming: "Hello, please ask what to drink." ”
What makes this coffee shop special is that several baristas and managers on shifts here are visually impaired.
Although the clerk could not see it, he quickly noticed that a customer was coming. / Coffee in the palm of your hand
The barista in front of me is called Xuetong, and he calmly helps me finish the order. When I was seated, Xuetong stood at the coffee brewing table in front of the cash register, and when I was wondering how he could make coffee that was almost invisible, a slightly blunt electronic voice came from his mobile phone——
"Ten-Eight-Grams" "Ten-Six-Grams"
Through the sensor, the phone broadcasts the weight of the coffee beans.
He skillfully poured the weighed ground coffee into the pot, then held the pot with his left hand clamping the filter cup and his right hand. The water column slowly came out, and he listened to the hot water passing through the coffee powder and filter paper, and then the aroma spilled out of the cup.
Although a little water spilled on the table as the pot left the filter cup, Xuetong seemed to know all this, and the next step, he picked up a towel and gently wiped the table top.
There is also a weigher under the coffee cup.
Brewing coffee, not to mention visually impaired people, even a person with normal vision, needs to be careful. But for Xuetong, everything has long been understood, and it does not matter whether it is visible or not.
Every Monday to Friday, Xuetong, who lives near Zengcheng, rides the subway for more than an hour like an ordinary office worker to the coffee shop, and he says that with a guide dog to accompany him, he can act independently.
When he was "blind", Xuetong once had four or five years of "self-isolation", did not go out to deal with people, did not work, and his life was once in darkness.
In 2018, a recruitment for a "cool blind" barista rekindled hope. Since childhood, he has loved the taste of coffee, but can a blind person really make coffee?
Starting from the theoretical knowledge, Xuetong wrote down the water temperature corresponding to different beans, the thickness and grinding degree of coffee beans, the impact of bean roasting degree on flavor, and so on. Then, through continuous operation practice, weigh the beans, grind the beans, warm the cup, pour water and stew... Eventually, he successfully obtained the SCA Coffee Basics Certification.
Xuetong is always smiling.
Xiaoxiao, a 25-year-old visually impaired person, is the manager of Palm Coffee.
In Xiaoxiao's field of vision, the 10-centimeter-tall coffee filter is just a vague square, but Xiaoxiao needs to hold it firmly and ensure that the boiling water can accurately rush into the center of the filter cup with a diameter of less than 7 centimeters.
Before becoming the manager of a palm coffee shop, Xiaoxiao was a librarian.
In early 2018, a tweet in the circle of friends hit her, "Do you want to be a cool blind guy who can drink coffee?" Xiaoxiao signed up with the mentality of trying it out. This is a training program for visually impaired dististas initiated by Hemu Charity.
To brew a cup of hand-brewed coffee, the hand-brewing pot needs to circle the filter cup to inject water, and the water temperature, water injection, brewing time, and water injection all affect the flavor of a cup of coffee.
In the palm of the coffee shop, there are some customer messages on the wall.
Initially, the trainees cuped left and right pots, and formed muscle memory purely by training.
However, in the subsequent exercises, in order to facilitate the mastery of the size of the water flow, the students opened their left hands, replaced the cup with their hands, felt the range of the circle and the flow rate of the water column with their palms, and repeated it over and over again, and finally the water column landed steadily on the wall of the filter cup.
One hand and one heart mutual induction, "palm coffee" comes from this.
In May 2018, Hemu Public Welfare Visually Impaired Barista Training Program was launched, and a total of 10 visually impaired partners participated in the coffee training in the first phase. A month later, more than 90 cups were sold in just two days at the offline specialty coffee pop-up store.
This makes the visually impaired partner realize that there are people who are willing to support and pay for the coffee brewing that they love to learn; working as a barista can be a source of livelihood. This means that one's own labor can be seen and affirmed by the outside world.
Palm Coffee Program was one of the first trained baristas for the visually impaired.
In 2019, invited by the Guangzhou co-working space "Start Work Together Community", "Palm Coffee" has a formal offline store, in the store, often different public welfare activities are held, so that many people who come here find that the original blind people do not necessarily have to do blind massage, they can not only make coffee, but also do a lot of things.
After two years of growth, in addition to becoming a barista, Xiaoxiao often travels to participate in coffee-related exchanges and give voices to the visually impaired.
In the view of Jiu Girl, a public welfare person in the Hemu Innovation Center, another goal of the Palm Coffee Project is to expand the social circle of the visually impaired group itself, so that the visually impaired people can move from a closed state to be seen. Because of being seen, there are more possibilities.
The sign on the coffee seat reads, "I'm blind, but I have vision." "It's the fascinating side of the visually impaired.
Recalling that in 2018, when Hemu Public Welfare first released the "Palm Coffee" visually impaired specialty barista training program, Jiu Girl heard a lot of questions: How many blind people can this solve the livelihood problem?
She said that in that year, everyone had no score in their hearts.
But she always has a cognition, if they can't open the eyes of this group and give them enough space for mental development, they will always be regarded as weak; if society can't return to the personal level to really contact this group, then everything is still empty talk in the mirror.
Now, Palm Coffee has smoothly passed the second year. It's going to get better and better, and everyone believes it.