Is ChatGPT Making Every Coffee Shop Sound the Same?

ChatGPT can name your next latte, write the description, and make the graphic. But how much of your shop are you willing to hand over?

BY JADE VALORE
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Featured photo courtesy of ChatGPT

What to know:

• When dealing with tight schedules, some coffee shop owners may find it tempting to use ChatGPT and other AI tools to help with menu and graphic creation—but is doing so harmful?
• Chris Deferio, owner of Keys to the Shop Consulting, advises his clients to refrain from using AI, saying it leads to cafés losing what makes them unique
• On the other hand, some small coffee shop owners say using tools like ChatGPT has helped them out when juggling multiple responsibilities

Give me ten fall drinks. Name this latte. Write the caption. Make it sound like us.

That last request is where this gets interesting. We want something to sound like our shop, but we’re asking a tool available to everyone else to tell us what that sounds like.

Coffee shops have always borrowed from each other. Instagram didn’t invent copying, and ChatGPT didn’t either. But now the drink idea, name, description, and promotional image can all come from the same conversation with a chatbot.

For an owner buried in schedules, orders, and a line out the door, that’s appealing. It also deserves a harder look than “everyone’s doing it.”

What are we handing over?

Chris Deferio, owner and president of specialty coffee consulting and coaching company, Keys to the Shop, advises his clients against using AI. “I generally discourage my clients from using AI because it short changes them in the creative and ideation process,” he says.

For Chris, working through an idea helps a shop learn how to execute it, market it, and maintain it. Skip that work, and he worries the relationship with the menu becomes easy come, easy go.

“Copying has always happened,” says Chris.

Chris’ concern is the loss of what he calls “café terroir”—the local flavor and personality that connect a shop to its surroundings. In his view, cafés in Thailand and San Francisco can end up looking, feeling, and tasting remarkably similar.

He puts AI alongside Instagram and Pinterest. The underlying problem, he argues, is the desire to reduce risk and cut corners.

Elon University’s Lee Rainie told TechCrunch that AI tends to “shave off the edges” in images and language. For an independent shop, those edges might be the point.

Somebody still has to run the shop

Roxanne Erickson, owner, manager, and barista at Who Spilled The Beans in Piedmont, Oklahoma, has practical reasons for using ChatGPT.

She turns to it for specials, graphics, schedules, and decisions such as whether to offer one drink size at an event. She’s even made a funny image of herself in a traffic uniform, because directing cars in the parking lot is sometimes her job, too.

There’s the less glamorous side of owning a coffee shop. You’re supposed to be developing an original menu, and somebody needs you outside moving cars. “I don’t think it’s skipping the creative work,” Roxanne says. “I think it’s using the tools that are made available to you.”

Roxanne doesn’t have an artist on hand or the design programs to make graphics she likes. Sometimes she needs ideas. Sometimes she needs time. An instant response gives her something to consider without waiting for friends or customers to weigh in. She doesn’t use every answer.

Some suggestions have become drinks that sold well.

“There are combinations that it has come up with that I never would’ve thought to put together and have been so delightful,” she says.

She has also struggled with wrong logos and with asking for one image change only to get several back. Getting an answer quickly doesn’t mean getting exactly what she asked for.

The customer gets a vote

The skepticism extends beyond coffee. In a June 2025 survey of 5,023 U.S. adults, Pew Research Center found that 53% expected AI to worsen creative thinking, while 16% expected improvement.

That measures public opinion. It doesn’t prove an AI-assisted menu is less creative.

The same survey found that 76% considered it extremely or very important to distinguish AI-made pictures, videos, and text from human-made content. Yet 53% had little or no confidence in doing so.

Those aren’t findings about latte purchases. They’re a reminder that customers may care how something was made, even when they can’t tell.

Chris wants owners to do the difficult work of developing an identity. Roxanne sees a tool that helps her get work done. Her experience makes it hard to dismiss every AI suggestion as a creative surrender. His argument makes it hard to pretend there’s nothing at stake.

Someone still has to taste the drink, price it, and teach the staff to make it during a rush.

And someone has to ask why it belongs on this particular menu.

If the only answer is “ChatGPT suggested it,” keep working.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jade Valore is the CEO of Rad Coffee, a Southern California coffee brand she co-founded in 2015, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Food & Drink. She has spent more than a decade in specialty coffee and writes about the industry from behind the bar.

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