Posted by TheShot on 20 May 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Machine, Restaurant Coffee
We’ve been monitoring Coca-Cola’s murky interests in the coffee business for some time now. The most obvious example being their patent filings in recent years, which have lead to — among other things — their launch of Far Coast coffee pod and machine systems for food service retailers.
In today’s news, Coke announced they will be [...]
Posted by TheShot on 27 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade, Quality Issues
The April 2007 issue of Coffee Talk primarily focused on the annual SCAA conference next month. The most interesting article comes from George Howell, president of Terroir Coffee Company, who wrote about the state of the world’s quality coffee supplies: Towards a segmented quality coffee market [PDF file, page 8].
With the growing public awareness of [...]
Posted by TheShot on 11 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
In case you thought we were simply making things up for the benefit of a joke, coffee is truly getting worse at the same time it’s supposedly getting better. Today’s commercial flood of poorly designed home espresso machines marks some of these steps backwards. Other examples are more insidious, such as how the Nespresso machine [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Fair Trade
Some of you may recall just how much the zombie children of the Fair Trade cult scare the bejeezus outta me. Ritual Coffee Roasters barista, Gabriel Boscana, wrote a much more tactful and civil approach to these single-issue customers in this month’s issue of Barista Magazine: FebMarch 07 - Certified Coffee Pusher. It was oddly [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 20 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Coffee Health, Consumer Trends
The bizarrely misplaced food freak-out continues, as we have people overlooking the environmental, energy consumption, and dietary/health horrors of the processed foods that make up 80% of today’s American diet — focusing instead on caffeine as the root of all evil. Today, TV station KERO in Bakersfield, CA reported that a coffee-drinking New York city [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 17 Nov 2006 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Restaurant Coffee
ChannelNewsAsia published an article today on Coca-Cola’s venture into coffee distribution in Singapore: Channelnewsasia.com - Coca-Cola ventures into premium specialty coffee. Coca-Cola has been investing in coffee service for quite some time. In previous posts here, we’ve covered their development of Far Coast pod systems — among other patents. As one of Wall Street’s darling [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 Sep 2006 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Restaurant Coffee
So Coca-Cola finally revealed some of what they’ve been up to with their recent patent frenzy (as reported here in January): Coca-Cola’s next ‘real thing’: lattes - Sep. 1, 2006. Next Wednesday in Toronto, Coca-Cola plans to formally announce their foray into “premium” brewed tea and coffee.
The brand is called Far Coast (the corresponding Web [...]
Posted by TheShot on 23 Jul 2006 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
As a follow-up to Thursday’s post where we covered the coffee pod revolutionaries, yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer published an article on how Big Beverage is plotting the demise of any actual coffee brewing: Drink makers want America to buy coffee to go.
What’s puzzling is how many usually sensible industries are getting the new coffee equation all [...]
Posted by TheShot on 05 Jul 2006 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article yesterday on how soft drink industry giants are banking on coffee consumers wanting convenient, instantaneous coffee: Soft drink titans push coffee in a can | ajc.com.
Just as when large, conglomerate coffee roasters convinced consumers that the future of good coffee was crystalized grit in a can during the [...]
Posted by TheShot on 19 Apr 2006 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Starbucks
Coca-Cola continues its coffee beverage push, recently announcing a drink to be launched in July that’s “more decadent than just plain coffee”: New coffee launched by Coca-Cola and Godiva - Drinks Business Review. Undoubtedly, it will be another Coca-Cola BlāK — meaning that we should expect consumers’ short attention spans to give this a shelf [...]
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