Year-end coffee notes: banish urns; brew more coffee, less beer
Posted by TheShot on 31 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
The year 2008 wasn’t about to end without a couple of newsworthy coffee notes. First, we have Chicago’s Intelligentsia banning coffee urns at their Broadway St. mothership: Intelligentsia on Broadway banishes urn coffee | The Stew – A taste of Chicago’s food, wine and dining scene.
Earlier this year, we reported on how they killed off the 20-ounce, venti-sized coffee beverage. Now by freshly brewing cups for every customer by default (via a Clover brewer), Intelligentsia commendably wants to push the quality envelope even further. Vacuum pot coffee is also apparently just around the corner at their locations.
In other news, beer giant Heineken announced that they are getting into the coffee business: DutchNews.nl – ‘Heineken to move into coffee sales’. Heineken cites a recent downturn in beer sales that lead them to their nascent interest in selling tea and coffee to bars and cafés, mirroring Coca-Cola’s recent business-to-business coffee moves. All of which seems rather fishy — given how much alcohol sales are notoriously recession proof, and given news from many European cafés, most notably in France, indicating their current struggles to survive.
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I was at the Broadway store this morning, and while they don’t have the kinks of the new customer flow worked out yet, it’s promising. As I understand it one gives an order to the barista first, and my friend who works there claims that customers often get their drinks before they even pay (as the the linked article that I’m simultaneously reading mentions). Anything smaller than a cappuccino gets served with still or sparkling water in a real glass. They are also adding Cafesolo service alongside the existing Chemex service.
The coffee-of-the-day is a sweet deal. It might still be expensive to some, but I was pleased with the fact that I paid less than $2.50 for their Yirg brewed to order. They’ve really stepped up the consistency and quality of the Clover brews – enough to overcome my early skepticism.
I still despise the current iteration of Black Cat, however.