Posted by TheShot on 28 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Quality Issues
In a bizarre way, I have to give props to NPR today for airing a story on coffee tasters at Folgers, of all places: NPR : Meet the Woman Who Dictates the Taste of Coffee. NPR could have just as easily chosen to stereotypically interview the coffee taster at some sedated, eco-friendly company run by [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 09 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends
From today’s ABC News (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - that ABC News), Big Four coffee giant, Nestlé, is seeking to obtain exclusive rights to two rather generic images of coffee in a coffee mug: Copyright moves ignite coffee controversy - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
The two images Nestlé is trying to copyright — one of [...]
Posted by TheShot on 29 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
On Friday, The Republican (Springfield, MA) reported on a recent, local case of daughter-mother domestic abuse: Counseling ordered in ‘poisoned coffee’ case - Breaking News - MassLive.com. On the surface, the story is your typical police blotter fodder. But peel back a layer, and it raises all sorts of questions about what really goes [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 24 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Quality Issues, Robusta
Corporate spokespeople frequently speak volumes more in what’s left unsaid than in what they say. Take yesterday’s Reuters news release from The Big 4’s Kraft Foods. Kraft’s flagship coffee, Maxwell House, has desensitized American coffee taste buds for decades. Kraft has just recently decided to use 100% arabica beans in Maxwell House’s cans of unholy [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade, Starbucks
No, I’m not slated as the latest guest movie reviewer for TV’s Ebert & Roeper. (Though I would love to be backstage to witness Robert Roeper tell his guests, “My show. Got that? It’s my show now!”) But last night, KQED aired a coffee-crisis-themed documentary for PBS’s “Indepedent Lens,” titled Black Gold: Independent Lens . [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 08 Jan 2007 | Tagged as: Fair Trade, Restaurant Coffee, Starbucks
Yesterday’s Sunday Times (London) ran a story concerning McDonald’s UK’s announcement of a coffee supply partnership with the Rainforest Alliance: McDonald’s brews up £1m fair trade deal - Sunday Times - Times Online. At first read, I opted not to add a blog entry on how the Rainforest Alliance served as another alternative example to [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 13 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade, Foreign Brew, Robusta
In response to the precipitous rise of specialty coffee in recent years, coffee’s traditional Big Four (Nestlé, Sara Lee, Kraft, and Proctor & Gamble) — rather than compete by raising their quality standards — responded instead by seeking cheaper bean stocks to squeeze out more profits. The Vietnamese robusta coffee market rode the wave of [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 31 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew
Here’s a shocker. In today’s news, Vietnam seems to have suddenly discovered that much of their coffee is of utter crap quality: Viet Nam News | Coffee quality drops off alarmingly.
What’s curious is that the article seems taken aback by the discovery that Vietnamese coffee might not be the richest coffee in the world, as [...]
Posted by TheShot on 05 Sep 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Robusta
Although expectations of record robusta coffee bean prices were set months ago, it wasn’t until last month that the price of robusta reached a seven-year high in London. What’s next? Some say arabica beans, according to an article in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Next hot commodity? Arabica coffee beans.
With record robusta prices hitting the pocketbooks of [...]
Posted by TheShot on 22 Aug 2006 | Tagged as: Quality Issues, Robusta
Today’s New York Times reports that Folgers is planning a $20 million advertising campaign on a new line of “gourmet” Folgers: Tempting the Traditional Coffee Drinker to Move Up - New York Times.
It seems that even Proctor & Gamble can no longer ignore the McDonald’s effect. However, what’s not clear is if consumers will need [...]
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