$13 coffee worth the brew-haha?
Posted by TheShot on 08 Apr 2010 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee
The mainstream media barely understand that qualitative differences exist between really good coffee, good coffee, and average coffee — let alone that some of the differences might be worth shelling out a few extra bucks on. CNN is one of the more recent outlets to ponder the differences: $13 coffee worth the brew-haha? – CNN.com.
Of course, this is an old story just now washing up on the remote cultural shores of CNN’s Atlanta headquarters. Back in 2007, we wrote about $15 cups of Hacienda la Esmeralda and even UK restaurants that sold $14 cups of Nespresso (Nespresso! You know, the same people who brought us Taster’s Choice.) By 2008, we experienced first-hand exposure to these media biases when we were interviewed for a variety of magazine articles and TV news programs. We realized then that the common theme was a need to defend better coffee — and why we should consider paying more for it.
At least the CNN piece didn’t take a typical Bay Area approach, which was more along the bizarre logical lines of, “How can you justify a $10 cup of coffee when there are starving children in the world?” Instead, CNN seemed to think the price should translate to ridiculous levels of service — underscoring how they couldn’t differentiate Thunderbird-like rot-gut from a DRC burgundy of the coffee world.
But what triggered our gag reflex when reading this story wasn’t yet another tiresome reference to kopi luwak — the gag novelty of the coffee tourist world. Instead, it was mention of Baltimore’s Jay Caragay — a good coffee guy and one of the brains behind Portafilter.net — and how he actually named a café “Spro”.
So it ain’t so, Jay. Baristas at quality coffee shops already have their hands full trying to buck the hipster doofus stereotype.
UPDATE: May 26, 2010
Speaking of the Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda, today the New York Times joined the annual media chorus on it: Ristretto | Hacienda La Esmeralda – T Magazine Blog – NYTimes.com. There you’ll find references in that piece to both kopi luwak and DRC burgundy. Coincidence?
4 Comments »
[...] $13 coffee worth the brew-haha? A year ago, there’s no way that I would spend $13 for a cup of coffee. But if I was in the Baltimore area, I’d think about stopping by and checking out this coffee shop. What about you? How much would you be willing to spend for a cup of coffee? The Shot’s response. [...]
on the whole, i’d rather have a 3 buck cup
and donate 10 to some worthwhile charity.
We’re huge supporters of the notion that consumers shouldn’t be so lazy as to pay a third party to make their charitable contributions for them. For example, don’t donate 2% of my purchase to charity — give me the 2% discount and I will write the check to the charity of my choice without the added middleman. (We wrote a bit about this on the topic of corporate social responsibility a couple years back.)
But what’s funny are the people who don’t connect the dots, though — i.e., the people who demand that coffee shops offer health benefits and living city wages to their workers, who demand that top dollar be paid to coffee farmers through Fair Trade-like systems, etc. And then they complain that their coffee isn’t $0.50 a cup.
Even so, everybody has their pet issues to spend money on that someone else might think is outrageous — whether it’s their cars, cable TV packages, the prices they spend on wine or restaurants or coffee, golf memberships, guns, travel, concerts, dance lessons, etc. Anyone who suggests that someone else should only spend so much on something that they like, just because they wouldn’t spend more on it themselves, pretty much makes them a hypocrite.
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