What is your coffee lifestyle?
Posted by TheShot on 07 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Home Brew
Last year while looking to upgrade my home stereo from a Michael J. Fox-era boom box, I made the mistake of stopping into a Bose store. There I rudely discovered that Bose does not sell home stereos. No, they sell lifestyles. Problem was that I was already quite happy with my pre-owned lifestyle; I just wanted a stereo.
Ridiculous, personal-identity-defining branding experiences like that, however, are no longer the exclusive domain of luxury cars and expensive home theaters — it’s now eating its way through the consumer food chain in a big way. This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine ran a story on how even an innocuous commodity like soap must now “define who you are as a consumer”.
Apparently coffee is not immune either. For example, today’s Boston Globe announced Green Mountain Coffee’s introduction of their new “PBS blend”: Green Mountain Coffee brews new “PBS Blend” - Business Ticker - The Boston Globe. Go to the Green Mountain Web site, and we are told, “Be more aware, inspired, original. Be more PBS®.” Green Mountain famously stokes up the environmental fervor from the hills of Vermont, but when is my choice of coffee a statement about my out-of-the-closet love for Rick Steves and my S&M obediance to Suze Orman?
Now I can actually understand those countless coffee products out there with the Lexus brand image and the Chevy Impala taste. Afterall, we’ve long had that analog in the wine world — for example, when Orson Welles told us Paul Masson sells no wine before its time, even if the stuff took only four months to make (“Thursday was a most excellent vintage…”). It’s one thing to market stale, pre-ground coffee in a sealed capsule — coffee’s answer to instant Tang — like a $10 candy bar. It is quite another to market to your personal coffee lifestyle.
Which brings me to a somewhat related, disturbing news item released today about the introduction of a new style of coffee in that coffee-as-medicine vein: Slimming coffee to launch in UK. Here we learn, “the drink, named CoffeeSlender, uses a novel, coffee-derived ingredient called Svetol that has been shown in studies to aid weight loss during a diet.” I suppose that after extensive market research, Café Bulimia just wasn’t as appealing — even if it is what all the top models are drinking.
5 Comments »
on 10 Dec 2006 at 4:57 pm PT 1.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Coffee: Drink or lifestyle? How about both? said …
[...] In case you thought last week’s coffee lifestyle article was something of a joke, a headline from today’s Muncie, IN The Star Press might convince you otherwise: Coffee: Drink or lifestyle? How about both? | The Star Press - http://www.thestarpress.com - Muncie, IN. Except here your lifestyle statement isn’t so much in your choice of what you drink, but rather in where you drink it. [...]
on 27 Dec 2006 at 11:30 am PT 2.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » There’s a war brewing, but taste is still the loser on America’s coffee front said …
[...] And yet there’s a third party in all this, the spectators, who just want better coffee — regardless of the lifestyle image supposedly projected by their choice of where to drink it. For us, watching Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts duke it out is a bit like watching two inebriated women in an eye-gouging, mud-wrestling cat fight trying to settle the Miss Congeniality crown. The absurdity of the situation keeps us laughing. That is, until we want to take a break for a decent coffee and discover that our favorite café sold the business to one of these louts. And then we start crying. [...]
on 23 Apr 2007 at 10:10 pm PT 3.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Saving Earth one cup at a time - but only if that cup contains coffee said …
[...] Earth Day couldn’t pass last weekend without a multitude of feel-good press releases from coffee peddlers. We already knew that our coffee could support Ernie & Bert’s ambiguously gay lifestyle through Public Television. Now we read about how our coffee could save chimps, help solve the energy crisis, and even how it could stamp out poverty and save planet earth itself. That’s a lot for one cup of coffee — especially when a couple years ago all you could hope for was that it didn’t taste like an oil change. [...]
on 25 Apr 2007 at 6:41 pm PT 4.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Saving Earth one cup at a time - but only if that cup contains coffee said …
[...] Earth Day couldn’t pass last weekend without a multitude of feel-good press releases from coffee peddlers. We already knew that our coffee could support Ernie & Bert’s ambiguously gay lifestyle on Public Television. Now we read about how our coffee could save chimps, help solve the energy crisis, and even how it could stamp out poverty and save planet earth itself. That’s a lot for one cup of coffee — especially when a couple years ago all you could hope for was that it didn’t taste like an oil change. [...]
on 18 May 2007 at 4:11 pm PT 5.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Green Coffee capsules - all the weight loss benefits, none of the bitter taste! said …
[...] The uncontrollable urge to assign shamanic powers of eternal life or instant death to coffee are still in full bloom. Last December, we reported on the UK introduction of CoffeeSlender (a.k.a. Café Bulimia), a coffee drink that claimed to help consumers lose weight through something called Svetol — a derivative of green coffee beans. Today we can apparently bypass the beverage part entirely and just take a pill (it’s about time!): Response Source | Press Releases - Green Coffee capsules - all the weight loss benefits, none of the bitter taste! [...]