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Specialty Coffee – Let’s Make It Rightby The Specialty Coffee convention held in These conventions, originally intended to cater to domestic retailers, soon seemed to take on a Lorelei-like appeal to those foreigners who were bound to be impressed by the seemingly irrational retail prices in specialty shops, whether by the pound or by the cup. Inevitable disappointment for many of them was bound to follow the show, as most hard headed potential green buyers, not taken in by the hype preceding the affair, would see in their many offerings a failure to meet the simple standard of value for value, the concept of free market prices based on supply and demand. And the demand in specialty is force fed by the almost mystical aura surrounding it. Undoubtedly, in many cases driven by pride in the results of their toil, growers may be unaware that there is nothing really “special” about what they were selling at all. But what they have seen is the strange spectacle of various groups such as Fair Trade, Bird Friendly, and others getting wild premiums for coffee that had little or no incremental intrinsic value in terms of actual quality and flavour. Maybe some of them hoped they might be able to cash in on the trend, especially if they represented countries or regions with romantic names, like Nicaraguan Matagalpa, Tanzanian Kilimanjaro, Costa Rican Tarrazu, New Guinea Sigri or Indian Mysore Plantation, to name but a few of the myriad sources and appellations. But there are other interesting things springing up from the
so-called specialty business. Young people, especially from I get regular calls from young people in this category, who may not wish to go home, but perhaps partly out of familial loyalty decide to try and sell coffee harvested on the old farm to Canadian and American roasters. That they are attempting to bypass a tried and efficient system of distribution seems to escape them. The green prices they see their parents receiving at origin and those they see roasters paying for the same coffee lure them into a non-contextual vision of riches to be gained. Then there is the Colombian Federation deciding to open stores,
getting in on the bonanza created by Starbucks, leveraging the value of the Here is what will seem like a tribute to that same Starbucks, by way of recounting the experiences I have had lately while on the road. Buying a cup of coffee whether I feel like it or not, and wherever I get the chance, serves for me as a kind of mini survey as to what is going on in the foodservice coffee world at end user level. The result was, as usual, disappointment. 16 ounce takeout cups at perhaps $1.75, containing lightly flavored hot water may not be appealing, but neither is coffee served in hotel meeting rooms in china cups from thermal servers that impart a faint residual taste of a stale brew served sometime in the past. This is especially annoying if that old brew was of a flavored variety. Under these conditions it would be pointless to employ good quality coffee to start with, an idea that many foodservice outlets seem to have taken to heart. Recently, in the “Double espresso please,” I said. “Sorry, the espresso machine is out today.” Amazing! That was the very first time I have even seen such a crisis in one of their outlets. “A cup of regular then, just black.” And to my delight I got
what, conceptually, was a real cup of coffee. The components of the blend may not have appealed to The specialty stores for which we at Heritage roast coffee all seem committed to the same concept – selling coffee brewed to a decent strength from clean containers, just as does Starbucks, with the added caveat that the coffee itself be of the highest caliber. The key is not to be swayed by “far away places with strange sounding names.” Quality is not necessarily in the geography – it’s in the cup. Copyright 2004 Stuart Daw
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