Posted by TheShot on 07 May 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Consumer Trends, Local Brew, Quality Issues
We’re more than a bit late with the news here, but a hearty and well-deserved congratulations to Kyle Glanville of LA’s Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea for winning the 2008 U.S. Barista Championship (USBC): 2008 US Barista Champion « The Official 2008 SCAA Conference Blog.
Proving the West is Best, and giving us some minor trash-talking rights, [...]
Posted by TheShot on 07 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee
This morning we came across an article in Convenience Store Decisions (how often have you heard that in a sentence?). The convenience store chain, 7-Eleven, has launched a new, multi-million-dollar marketing blitz this month, emphasizing the “guaranteed freshness” of their coffee: Convenience Store Decisions - 7-Eleven Promotes Fresh-Brewed Coffee.
Before reading this article/press release, we weren’t [...]
Posted by TheShot on 01 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Coffee Health, Consumer Trends
Many of you are probably more than already aware of this, but the latest trend in consumable marketing is something of an unholy marriage between food staples and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. It’s not just juice smoothies that promote mysterious “immunity boosts” anymore. It’s also things like fortified coffee.
And what’s with all this “energy boost” crap these [...]
Posted by TheShot on 21 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Coffee Health, Consumer Trends
If you ever wondered the depths at which some people can profit from human stupidity, today’s San Francisco Chronicle underscored the point: What’s New: Fortified organic coffee. (Thanks, Cindy Lee, for spreading the unchecked stupidity.) Yes, that “healthy coffee” thing, where foolish lemmings leap off cliffs in blind faith and obedience over health claims made [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 14 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends
The apocalypse must clearly be upon us. And it’s not just that oil slick out in the San Francisco Bay, either. In the news today is yet another reported “coffee connoisseur” obsession with coffee beans processed through the digestive enzymes of some mysterious Asian mammal: Monkey business yields gourmet Taiwan coffee | Lifestyle | Living [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 27 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew
Just to prove my point about how the French get away with coffee atrocities while profiting from an undeserved reputation for being such café sophisticates, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse in the new Sarkozy era: Artsick > Other > New Grounds in Coffee: The French Onion Roast. In an unholy [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 14 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
Props to the blog wcuk for one of the more thought-provoking posts I’ve read in a while: The Rise of Yuppie Foods « wcuk. It concerns the question of whether the diversification and specialization of common consumable staples — from coffee to wine to chocolate to the restaurants where we eat — is driven less [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 13 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Starbucks
Anthropologists really should take a closer look at the story of $600-a-pound coffee passed through Indonesian civet droppings, known as kopi luwak. This ‘news’ story has been repeatedly recycled across TV, newspapers, bloggers, and other media throughout the country for several years now — propagating like a Nigerian bank scam e-mail. And just like a [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 04 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Coffee Health, Consumer Trends
Will coffee marketing atrocities never cease? Of course not! Forget the transdermal patch, apparently the drug delivery mechanism of choice today is your good old cup of joe: WebWire | VitaBrew, enters fight against Osteoporosis and Diabetes type 2 with a Free Certified GNC and Eight O’ Clock Coffee Healthy Coffee recipe. I swear, I [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 20 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society, Local Brew
According to yesterday’s Marin Independent Journal, what looks like SF cable car No. 773 has been sitting along Redwood Highway in Mill Valley for some time. However, it’s no cable car — it’s a coffee kiosk that was custom built in Oregon to look like one, and it is destined to become the Mill Valley [...]
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