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While coffee bag weights were, by late 1999, recovering from
their long decline, the following article illustrates the psychology that
mitigates toward driving coffee service operators to lower weights and cheaper
coffee. Beware the temptation.
Who knows what a 'Cup of Coffee' is?
© 1984 Stuart Daw
(originally published June, 1984 in Tea &
Coffee Trade Journal)
Let's not kid ourselves. Coffee is one of
the most widely advertised commodities in the entire world. Time was, not so
long ago, when the great majority of people of coffee drinking age actually
did drink it. Buildings all over North America had the very word
"coffee" incorporated in their neon signs, as in "Coffee
Shop." Something called the "coffee break" became an
institution and even a legal requirement in America. Children, introduced to
coffee's aroma before graduating from the cradle, would observe their parents
hungering for coffee as if it were a life-giving requirement for their very
existence.
The goodwill covering coffee was so
all-pervading that it would be impossible to put a value on it. Its life cycle
in the American market as opposed to almost any other product has been
incredibly long. It was entrenched! Did it really need advertising to catch
public attention? And why would anyone, who once drank it, stop wanting to
drink it?
A student of Americana recently observed
that the secret to the success of the big, national hamburger chains is that
they have created a hamburger that taste like nothing (other than the
condiments applied thereto). In accomplishing that goal, they have struck the
lowest common denominator of public taste for meat — nobody can find something
wrong with hamburgers that have no character at all.
The same principal is a hazard for the
coffee business. For not everybody in this world loves coffee as such,
especially as a beginner. Indeed, the very young have to be nudged gently into
drinking it. Today's flavored coffees pander to that condition, serving those
who like only a faint suggestion of coffee flavor.
"Little extra water"' cut down on
"complaints"
In the past of the food service industry, the
pragmatic restaurateur, ear cocked for complaints and eyeballs fixed firmly on
the cash register, often found that a little more water in the coffee seemed
to cut down on "complaints," while enhancing the bottom line. The
psychology of coffee drinking seems to dictate that people rarely compliment a
restaurant on their coffee, but will complain if it is not to their liking.
A good, rich cup of coffee can often
overpower delicate tastebuds. A low quality coffee or one that is badly brewed
will offend many people. The truth is in such instances, the weaker the coffee
the less offensive the resulting flavor. And as far as the restaurateur is
concerned, his own taste appreciation often varies inversely with his per cup
cost.
Nothing was more chilling to the old coffee
salesman than to hear a restaurateur say, "I'm using less coffee and I'm
not getting any complaints," or "I'm paying your competitor less and
as long as I'm not getting complaints, I can't see why I should come back to
you and your higher price. I might agree your coffee is better, but like I
say, nobody's complaining."
One can understand why, under such
bombardment, the long range descent into coffee mediocrity was a likely
result. But at least the coffee salesman and his company fought, and still
fight, against the trend. They do so simply because it is in their best
interests to resist weight reduction.
Roasters sell to the food service industry
by the pound, and the more pounds the better. So even if a coffee man was not
sure in the past of the strength/quality relationship, cupidity would motivate
him to maintain decent strength.
Besides, the restaurateur's customers were
paying good money for their coffee and presumably ordered it because they
liked to drink it. Some might resent the arbitrary watering-down of their
favorite brew and switch allegiance to the restaurant across the road that
serves coffee more to their liking.
In fairness to most restaurant and
institutional coffee salesmen I have known over the years, theirs was a
genuine desire to sell quality through strength. For proof of this, I recall
the old Golden Cup Award days of the Coffee Brewing Institute.
Strengthen Coffee For Golden Cup
When a restaurateur wished to win a Golden Cup Award
he would have to strengthen his coffee to not more than 2.5 gallons of water
to the pound in an urn (or not less than 3.2 ounces of coffee to 0.5 gallon
decanter). He would often accuse his coffee salesman of using the Golden Cup
Award as a ruse to sell him more coffee for the same volume of liquid coffee
sold.
But the salesman could always disprove the
charge, for I know of no case — repeat, no case — where a restaurant qualifying
for a Golden Cup Award did not dramatically increase cup sales and thus coffee
profits, in spite of higher ingredient costs.
It was disappointing to see most restaurant
operators, having won a Golden Cup, water down the beverage again towards pre
Gold Cup strength. Why? To squeeze out a few extra pennies profit through
using a little less coffee?
I think not. Most of the time it was in
response to one or more complaints that the coffee was "too bitter,"
too black," and/or "too burnt." In fact, John and Mary, out for
a work break at the corner restaurant, doing the traditional thing by ordering
coffee, often just didn't love it enough to drink it strong, the way a true
coffee lover does.
The Easy Way Out
Vindicating his judgment by citing these
complaints, the restaurateur took the easy and profitable way out — he added
water. But at least the whole industry had a standard of excellence to cling
to, and it is my contention that is what we need today.
If you must water down your coffee, that is
not a sin, but at least you should know what you are watering it down from.
Just because most scotch drinkers add water, one doesn't see the distillers
bottling the stuff with extra water in it. The standard is maintained.
The great tragedy of the coffee service
industry is that it is unlike other methods of reaching the coffee market in
that its operators' interests seem to be different than the roasters' as in
the case cited above. The coffee operator buys coffee by the pound but sells
it by the cup. The fewer pounds (or more cups) the better.
Therefore there are no checks and balances
built into the coffee service operator's motivation, and so the downward
spiraling of coffee quality and strength seems to go on indefinitely. The
operator wants to conserve his margins. When his costs rise, he has only two
choices — cut coffee weight or increase prices.
It is not hard to guess which choice is the
easier. The rationalizations and outright evasions by the operator as far as
what is in his or his industry's long range best interests come easily. And
who is to say what strength is right for coffee service, anyway?
In the early days of coffee service it was
assumed that normal restaurant coffee strength should apply to the business
office as well. Because of lower consumption at the office, the deterioration
of quality due to the longer dwell time of brewed coffee on the warming plate,
and because coffee was constantly available to consume, in most cases free
or at low cup cost, somewhat lighter weights was not surprising. But it should
not have been a license to put virtually no coffee in the bag at all.
And if the coffee service operator can't
quite make the connection between strength and quality, then his
roaster/supplier is certainly happy to follow the lines of least resistance and
sell him what he requests. This is bad enough. But nationally branded coffees,
anxious to enter the away from home market which they never have been able to
crack before, are flaring their nostrils and pawing the turf, smelling a way
to cash in on the coffee service operators' weakness.
Not only can they capitalize on public brand
awareness and retail orientation at the office level, but they can accomplish
other things as well. Low quality can be masked by light weights. These light
weights call also be used as a way to raise prices, in effect, without
attracting too much notice.
For example, one national company recently
changed package weights. Users of "flaked" 1.3 ounce coffee can no
longer buy it from that company. They can only buy 1.25 or 1.1 ounce.
Until this policy was enforced, 46 x 1.3
ounce coffee was selling to the coffee service operator for $11.28 per case,
or $3.02 per pound. Now the same operator is forced to buy 46 x 1.25 ounces
for $12.55 per case, $3.49 per pound; or 46 x 1. 1 ounce for $11.14 per case,
$3.51 per pound. He could increase his weight to 1.5 ounces, getting 46 such
packages for $14.93, which would of course mean that for the same number of
packages his cost had risen by $3.65 per kit.
This conversion is unashamedly being sold as
a means of reducing kit costs from $11.98 to $11.14 by the simple device of
cutting from 1.3 to 1.1 ounces. Not mentioned is the real increased coffee
cost of $.49 per pound for the same pound of coffee.
Sadly for the industry many operators will
go along just because their per cost has not risen, and in many if not most of
their customers' offices no complaints will be heard. And maybe a couple of
non-coffee drinkers will start drinking the non-coffee thus being served.
But if two good coffee drinkers in the same
office are turned off by all of this, perhaps they would be silently
expressing the words that Patrick Henry might have uttered, were the Virginia
House of Burgesses supplied in his day by a modern coffee service operator—
"Are customers so sweet and profits so
dear as to be purchased at the price of 1.1 ounce flaked?" Forbid it,
almighty God! I cannot speak for the others, but as for me, give me
coffee with some guts in it…or give me no coffee at all."
© 1984 Stuart Daw
