Posted by TheShot on 05 Aug 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends
Yesterday we came across a post where a Boston Globe writer implored winemakers to be more like their coffee counterparts: A lesson in winemaking – straight from the espresso bar . . . – By the glass – Wine News, Views & Reviews – Boston.com. It wouldn’t be the first time coffee’s wine analogy ran [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 08 Apr 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew
Yesterday CNN posted a brief video piece on coffee culture in its birthplace, Ethiopia: Ethiopia’s coffee love affair – CNN.com. The interviewees were weak, but the under-five-minute video offers some of the cultural backdrop behind coffee’s birthplace: the importance of coffee in the culture, how Ethiopians consume their coffee, and some of the challenges Ethiopians [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 03 Feb 2011 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Barista, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Machine
Many in the coffee industry speak volumes about wanting to market themselves to the public as the “new wine.” But if we examine the practices the industry has taken on to accomplish any of this, it has failed miserably on nearly all fronts. What becomes all too clear is that the coffee industry either doesn’t [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 01 Aug 2010 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Machine, Quality Issues, Starbucks
Quick!: name a city that’s surrounded by the exquisite natural beauty of mountains and seas, with brightly painted houses that decorate quaint neighborhoods, with great food everywhere you turn, with a nearby wine country consisting of hundreds of vineyards and many nationally renowned restaurants, with hipsters who frequent farmers’ markets in transitional neighborhoods, with a [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 21 May 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends
Because it is patently uncool for legitimate coffee professionals to gush over gag novelties for coffee tourists — i.e., kopi luwak — the media needs an alternative outlet to feed its overly simplistic “since it’s the most expensive, it must be the best” obsession. This is what we once called the nouveau riche stereotype: knowing [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 09 May 2009 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
Australians are no slouches when it comes to appreciating good coffee. But last month, an opinion piece in The Australian highlighted what the author, John Lethlean, felt was a lot of misplaced fuss, pomp, and circumstance going into coffee origins these days: Just a strong one, thanks | The Australian. A self-described “coffee-geek groupie,” Mr. [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 20 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Roasting
For the second of our three-part installment on How future coffee “Waves” will come to disparage the so-called Third, we examine some of coffee’s biggest qualitative fads going today: Single-origin coffees Medium roasts The heavy-handed use of cuppings We’ll examine a little of why we must get past these fads for accessible quality coffee to [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 07 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew
Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune reported on a curious coffee bar concept planned for Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea‘s latest location, currently under construction in Los Angeles’ Venice Beach. The concept includes featuring five different stations where five separate baristas personally attend to each customer, individually catering to their unique coffee whims: Intelligentsia plans a groundbreaking coffee bar [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 25 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Local Brew, Roasting
While revisiting Dynamo Donuts earlier this month, we quickly noted the bags of Four Barrel Coffee in the back. Like the Four Barrel Coffee mothership, Dynamo had been using Stumptown Hairbender to date — with rumors that they would switch over to Four Barrel once they got their roasting operations going. Four Barrel commenced their [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 03 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Roasting
Yesterday, the Seattle Weekly published a lengthy, thoughtful, and somewhat critical article on the exploding fad of consumer coffee cupping: Seattle’s New Way to Fetishize Coffee – Food – Seattle Weekly. As we’ve written here before, the coffee industry has shoehorned many wine analogies onto coffee appreciation. While this shorthand provides a simplistic reference point [...]
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