Why Coffee Is Getting Better

good coffee

I have a fairly low end (no bells and whistles), older Krups espresso maker that works like a charm. So, I make and drink my own cappucinos. Like the author, I am usually disappointed by many local coffee brewers, but not always. McDonalds makes a surprisingly improved cup of Java now. Not to forget: freshness counts a lot. Even the best tastes like swamp water when it's been on the burner too long.

I agree with the comment about having an aversion to paying $4-$5 for a cup of coffee, unless maybe it's being served on the Boulevard St. Germain!

Mark of WV @ Sep 13, 2008 19:03:22 PM

Coffee

There are definitely idiots out there. Anybody that will pay $4 - $5 bucks for a cup of coffee everyday is a gold plated sucker. Starbucks laughs all the way to the bank. Talk about the emperor and his invisible clothes.

James of NC @ Sep 10, 2008 15:44:09 PM

Is every consumable an indistinguishable commodity?

If you operated a business where you produced a good or product that consumers thought the only difference was based upon price, how would you run that business? You'd make the cheapest stuff available, using as indiscriminately low-grade supplies as you could -- and still qualify as that generic, indiscriminate product. Toss on Henry Ford's rules of industrialization, add scale, find innumerable ways to cut corners, and this is how you made your profits.

Like many consumables, this is what happened to coffee in the 20th century. Coffee beans were treated as the equivalent of nuts on screws -- so producers were incented to find the cheapest, lowest grade stuff available. No transparency. No accountability. Just give me a big can of generic "coffee".

Now people are coming to an awareness that their tomatoes don't taste the same under these conventional rules of industrialization as they do from the back yard. And so there's a growing consumer interest and demand for accountability and transparency in what they are actually getting for their money. A tomato isn't necessarily like every other tomato, and the same is true for coffee in how it is grown, handled, and prepared.

A lot of people still want lowest common denominator goods and prefer things to be the singular nouns of their industrial byproduct youth. All fine and good -- that's a matter of choice, and economics. But to call out "snobbery" just because someone remembers what a ripe tomato really used to taste like and asks for that experience again is their tragic loss. Because it is an offense to grandmothers everywhere -- who were right when they told us that the produce and foods of today tasted nothing like the fore bearers of their youth once industrial economics got their hands on them.

Long live better tomatoes ... and better coffee. The snobbery accusations can ferment among that lowest-common-denominator, undifferentiated muck.

Greg Sherwin of CA @ Sep 09, 2008 19:31:12 PM