Nobody enjoys paying 83% more for something than they paid for it last year. That is, unless you’re living in Zimbabwe under a 89.7 sextillion percent inflation rate. Earlier this year, the media were hot and heavy with news stories about surging coffee prices. However, some such stories are still trickling in — such as this local piece published earlier today where a number of local roasters are all but cheering the price increases: Coffee Beans at $15 a Pound OK for Some – Mission Loc@l : News From San Francisco’s Mission District.

The price of coffee has always struck a weird public nerve. So back in April, when the headlines threatened an apocalyptic future filled with fixed budgets and Folger’s crystals replacing our bags of Four Barrel, we learned that coffee prices reached a 34-year high.

This sounded alarmingly ominous — if not for the fact that this was also the equivalent of saying that coffee prices today were the same as they were in 1977. Think about it: how many things can you buy today at 1977 prices? A gallon of gas cost an average of $0.65. A 1.2-oz Hershey bar cost $0.20. You could buy a brand new BMW 320i for under $8,000.

We wish we could pay 1977 prices for a lot more things in life. So when you look at the price of coffee, the problem hasn’t been that the prices are far too high. The problem is that coffee prices have been so depressed for so long that we’ve had to come up with Hail-Mary passes like Fair Trade just to desperately try to keep coffee farmers solvent — still dirt poor, but at least not losing net money with every harvest. The article cited above quotes a few area roasters noting how economically unsustainable the coffee market has been for so many years.

It may hurt a little more to pay for good coffee when compared to last year. But this is perhaps the first time in a long, long time that coffee prices are about at what coffee should really cost. At least to support an economically viable and sustainable market for the good stuff.

Thanks to Tim of espressophile fame for giving us a heads-up on this article posted yesterday from GQ magazine: The Most Important Drink of Your Day: Restaurants + Bars: GQ. Tim got his heads-up from the guys down at Verve Coffee Roasters, who are among the handful of regional coffee shops highlighted in this best-of article. Also cited from the ‘hood, with photos, were Blue Bottle Coffee and Ritual Coffee Roasters.

Even if GQ doesn’t register on our respectable reading list — after all, they have a sub-section on their Web site dedicated to Megan Fox — we liked a few quotations from the piece, including:

So why, every morning, do you pay $4.79 for a watery latte that was lovelessly made on a push-button machine that could be safely operated by a 4-year-old?

But, as always, things get stupid when they stumble over this “Third Wave” business — what we’ve long dismissed as delusional, fabricated nonsense perpetuated by people who think they just invented good coffee or just discovered consumers who appreciate good coffee. (Or perhaps worse: naïve journalists that take this nonsense as fact.)

For example, in one paragraph, GQ presents a statement about these cafés returning to the quality practices of yore:

In case you haven’t heard, we’re living in a Golden Age of Coffee. (Note: Please don’t actually go around calling it that.) Thanks to a new generation of purveyors bent on returning craft and artistry to the beverage

Then to completely sound like they’re talking out of another bodily orifice, a few paragraphs later they commence mumbling about the “Third Wave”:

Here’s the deal: Vacuum-packed stuff like Folgers and Hills Bros. is considered coffee’s First Wave in America. Peet’s and Starbucks, which brought us espresso, are Second Wave. Third Wave? That’s the painstakingly crafted brew we’re talking about. Here’s how the new breed does it.

So which is it? New breeds, a new wave? Or is it a throwback “returning craft and artistry to the beverage”? The article should have stuck with its own final advice: shut up and drink it. All that time staring at January Jones’ cleavage on the cover has clearly affected their coherence.

Must be a light news day for the SF Chronicle to pull out an evergreen story like this today: Exploring our love of the bean from the grounds up. But while the Chronical [sic] has published up to 70% of the material in previous articles, the article provides a worthy (albeit brief) examination of SF’s coffee history — a history that we often reference and yet few locals may know about.

For example, there’s the Gold Rush origins of Folgers and Hills Bros. There’s Caffé Trieste and the birth of the SF cappuccino in the 1950s. There’s Peet’s Coffee & Tea‘s Berkeley origins from 1966 and their influence on a budding Seattle retail coffee company known as Starbucks. And of course there are obligatory nods to the city’s nouvelle vague roasters — plus a couple of redeemable restaurant coffee options.

Though perhaps our favorite reference is a 1963 SF Chronicle headline sensationally highlighting the sad state of SF restaurant coffee. (But perhaps not sensational enough to make Hearst proud.) Within six years we were able to put men on the moon, and yet 46 years later most restaurant coffee in this city is still rather terrifying.

In the “what were they thinking?” department, here’s a recent blog post discussing a new Folgers Coffee TV advertising campaign: Folgers: the taste of bad advertising « Jenichka’s Weblog. It’s been about 2-3 months since Folgers last publicly humiliated themselves — so this could be an improvement, depending on your perspective.

The theme of this ad campaign?: “Folgers Coffee — the choice of American aid workers stuck in Romania repatriating victims of Piteşti prison experiments.” Which begs the question: just how hard up do you have to be to enjoy a cup of Folgers? You know it’s bad when Romanians have taken insult with the ad campaign.

We have to admit: marketers of whole foods and commodities don’t have it easy. Product marketing is so much easier when you can reformulate and industrially process something with a bogus health claim and slap a “New!” logo on the packaging. It gets even easier when you can inject exotic substances with a “newly discovered” miracle mystique, likening them to modern day versions of Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth: things such as yerba maté, açaí berry, etc.

Given that coffee has pretty much been a known commodity for a millennium, how can you desperately try to rise above the crowd noise to garner attention? Two recent examples come to mind in the world of coffee marketing gimmickry: Starbucks‘ cynical commercial co-opting of the electoral process, and a small-time coffee company that exhumed a failed, two-year-old idea with a veneer of “Web 2.0″ newness.

This presidential election is brought to you by… Frappuccino®

After running aground on a growth-at-all-costs strategy, Starbucks has been desperately trying to find ways to become socially relevant again. While they still provide some lip service to the notion that quality is still tantamount at the corporation, it’s painfully obvious that, over the past decade, Starbucks completely lost their superior quality claim to more nimble and far better competitors. Far too massive, industrialized, and automated to compete with microroasters and award-winning baristas, today Starbucks is merely fighting a sheer numbers battle against other mass-market, fast food competitors.

One of Starbucks’ moves to enable their loyal customers to help lead them out of the desert was last year’s launch of My Starbucks Idea — which is essentially an online suggestion box that Starbucks positioned as forward-thinking, “Web 2.0″ customer engagement technology. One of the customer suggestions submitted and vetted through the site was to offer free coffee for voters in the recent presidential election. (And major props to fellow Chicago South Sider and 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama.)

So a week ago, Starbucks pulled out a wordy (and expensive) national television commercial, telling America that they would offer us a free cup of brewed coffee if we could prove to them that we voted.

How’s that for a feel-good promotion, brimming with civic responsibility? Well, it was illegal, for one. This promotional idea made it through Starbucks’ marketing and legal departments about as vetted as our Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Word quickly got out that the promotion violated California Elections Code section 18521 (b), in addition to related federal laws, which essentially prohibit bribing people to vote or not based on the promise of goods or services. Oops.

Starbucks quickly altered the program to comply with election laws, saying the coffee was free just for the asking. So to keep them honest, we took advantage of the offer at the Starbucks on 8th & Townsend Sts.. Sure enough, you had to explicitly ask that you expected the coffee for free.

So who can complain about free stuff, right? But just as we’ve given up the Christmas holiday to crass commercialism, there’s something intrinsically sad about seeing the same happening to our electoral process. We know that in this economy, promotions have to extend well before Christmas. But do we want to live in a society where we encourage voters to participate primarily for the free coffee? And if we’re going to sell out our vote, couldn’t we take a lesson from Sen. Ted Stevens and at least hold out for a Viking gas grill?

Meanwhile, Starbucks is hoping this promotional event provides a “Look, there goes Elvis!” distraction to investors, as today they announced that quarterly profits have declined 97%. As much as Starbucks wants to scapegoat the economy, their arguments seem all the more hollow while competitors such as Peet’s Coffee & Tea continue to post growth every quarter: Coffee Yes, Starbucks No – Forbes.com.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you

We’ve spoken before about the futility of trying to reinvent good coffee. Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company not only failed to heed these lessons when they recently launched “Coffee 2.0″ (we are not making this up), but they also copied a promotional campaign that spectacularly failed with a whimper two years ago: marketing coffee by and for bloggers.

Coffee for bloggers? Now where have we heard that before? Quoting their March 21, 2006 press release, Boca Java’s identical efforts to “directly target this [online] community as a consumer demographic and enable bloggers to purchase, create and name new coffee blends in the product line” failed so completely that today their promotional Web site for blogger coffee simply redirects you to their main storefront — without so much as a mention of their failed “coffee for bloggers” experiment.

Oblivious to Boca Java’s spectacular failure two years prior, a few “bloggers-rule-the-universe” types quickly applauded Joffrey’s Coffee 2.0 effort as a shining, innovative example of how to leverage the blogosphere (gag, hack, spew) as a modern marketing marvel. (And if you’re keeping score on said innovative “Web 2.0″ marketing tactics, do note that Starbucks’ efforts to launch coffee podcasts simply blew up on the launchpad two years ago as well.)

Joffrey’s writes of Coffee 2.0: “a new flavor based specifically on the feedback of the beta testers, with ‘upgraded flavor and taste featuring smooth caramel and smoky overtones’ and ‘increased focus power for less distraction.’” So we got ourselves a sample of Coffee 2.0 from its promoters.

How did it taste? Brewed in a French press, the resulting cup was a combination of wet and grainy and little inbetween — unlike the foamy, breathing, emulsion-like substance you get from fresh coffee. Hardly surprising given the dry, hard look of its stale, pre-ground coffee. The same goes for its flat, lifeless flavor. If we are to believe Coffee 2.0 and its beta testers, the future of coffee is basically Folgers.

How is it that some people can unwittingly ridicule themselves far more than anyone else could while trying? Case and point with Folgers Coffee.

Allow us to use a more bizarre application of the ever-popular wine analogy for coffee: for decades, Folgers profited as coffee’s equivalent of Thunderbird. But as consumers have developed more of an interest in, and taste for, higher quality products, the reach and profitability of the misery market — whether wine or coffee — has waned dramatically.

Thunderbird’s Ernest & Julio Gallo responded to the challenge with high-gloss marketing, upscale brands, and even a family crest. Folgers is responding with “the biggest innovation since the launch of decaf” and an ad campaign that is “the most expensive in the history of the brand,” according to yesterday’s New York Times: Advertising – Folgers Markets a New Coffee to Cost-Cutting Home Brewers – NYTimes.com.

Folgers is also responding with a heavy dose of unwitting self-ridicule. So what is this innovation? The culmination of 8-10 years of research, Folgers is unveiling a new roasting process that includes a “predry” or “preroast” step to make their product less bitter.

And here’s where the self-ridicule comes in. Also from the New York Times article:

Jim Trout, innovation leader for research and development, at P.& G., said: “It’s like thawing a turkey before you cook it. If you don’t, the outside will be burnt and the inside will still be raw. This way it cooks evenly all the way through.”

Now if you’re promoting a new product in the food industry that you want to be perceived as better, improved, and — dare we suggest — gourmet, why would anyone in a sane frame of mind compare their fancied product to frozen turkeys? We suppose we should at least give them credit for not comparing it to instant mashed potatoes.

As we hinted in a previous post, San Francisco magazine just published Josh Sens’ story on the more recent evolution of San Francisco’s local coffee scene in its most recent issue: A new buzz | San Francisco online. (There’s even an article featuring CoffeeRatings.com on the back page: The coffee bard | San Francisco online.)

The article features Coffee Bar, Blue Bottle Cafe, Ritual Coffee Roasters (including some great quotes from one of our favorite area baristas and coffee writers, Gabe Boscana), and Trouble Coffee. A couple of interesting points Mr. Sens raises in his article include:

• “It’s just coffee” — Running a business that really cares about the details involved with good coffee often requires a thick skin — especially in the face of the many knee-jerk reactionaries who ridicule what they see as coffee elitism. (I.e., “Folgers’ Crystals was good enough for my parents, and it should be good enough for you too.”)
• The Caffeine Factor — Trouble Coffee’s Giulietta Carrelli directly addressed the role caffeine plays in good coffee, which Mr. Sens found unorthodox and refreshing. In many ways, we appreciate the decaffeinated coffee drinker as a sort of “true” lover of coffee, independent of its psycho-chemical effects (i.e., its about “enjoyment” rather than “usage”). But there’s a reason why Duncan Hines is the #3 consumer of purified caffeine: the caffeine enhances the “mouth-watering taste” (OK, that’s a bit subjective) of their brownie mixes.

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 orphan bonobos and a CEO who hasn’t washed his hair nor worn pants since 1978 (see: PBS lifestyle coffee). But instead, they went for one of the Big 4: the unholy quartet of corporate coffee evil incarnate. The sweet smell of underwriting, perhaps??

Although I would never seek out coffee from a company that advertises their brand in association with New York sewer covers, the article does give the take of Folgers’ master roaster on the qualities evaluated and processes used when grading their coffee and standardizing their blends. Body, acidity, aroma, flavor…now where else have I seen these? Time for another smackdown between Folgers crystals and fancy restaurant coffee, like Lee’s Deli on Market St. near Montgomery St.

Today’s New York Times Magazine published an article on the declining design aesthetic of the espresso machine: The Pod People – New York Times. As the author puts it, “Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great machines.” And she blames the meteoric popularity of Starbucks, which inspired a great wave of ensuing greed by machine manufacturers and roasters targeting the home market.

In particular, she points out the design demise from the espresso pod and pod machine market — citing its inherent packaging wastefulness, the ugliness of the new wave of pod-friendly machines, and the irritation of over-designed machines that only work with a select kind of overpriced coffee pod. (The last phenomenon being so bad that there is a market for “ghetto pods” — echoing the days of do-it-yourself inkjet printer cartridge refills.)

Coffee pod freshness

If poor design were their only drawback. The author takes a pass on criticizing espresso pod quality, stating, “Admittedly, Nespresso and E.S.E. do taste rather good. (The premeasured grounds are fresh, thanks to the hermetically sealed capsules.)”

It’s clear the author is a designer and not necessarily a coffee geek, but this is an old soapbox topic for us. Virtually all the coffee you purchase today comes in some sort of hermetically and/or vacuum-sealed container — including Folger’s and Maxwell House. (Even setting aside that pre-ground coffee is far more unstable than whole bean.) If that were necessary and sufficient to keep coffee supplies fresh, there would be little advantage to home roasting or purchasing roast-dated coffee from the likes of Blue Bottle, etc.

But the truth is that freshness matters a lot, and it matters immensely when it comes to espresso. No matter how well you mummify pre-ground, roasted coffee for shipment around the world and storage in warehouses, it is always more stale than local, recently roasted supplies. In espresso, it always produces a thinner, lighter, less healthy looking crema. I’ve never encountered a single exception to this rule. Just look at the photos and ratings from our Nespresso tests. So unless she’s comparing these pod machines to the home Krups models of the 1990s, coffee freshness remains a negative for these new machines/systems.

New York espresso redux

Also in today’s New York Times Travel section is an update on a familiar topic: where to get a decent espresso among Gotham City’s terrible standards: Weeknd in New York – Coffee Bars – Travel – New York Times. In addition to some of the usual suspects, they also mention Zibetto Espresso Bar — a relative newcomer of note.

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 into a can of Big Four coffee — and questions about the people who drink it regularly.

The short of it is that a 19-year-old daughter maliciously added Love My Carpet_® carpet & room deodorizer to her mother’s can of Maxwell House coffee. A regular Maxwell House drinker, the mother “had been experiencing stomach upset for about a month prior to her daughter being arrested.” She thus apparently continued to drink her daily cup of Maxwell House, oblivious to any taste, smell, or other sensory differences introduced by a big dose of Love My Carpet_® non-dairy creamer.

The sad story of domestic abuse is scary enough. But scarier still is the notion that a regular coffee drinker cannot tell the difference between Maxwell House and a carpet & room deodorizer. But I’m still not sure if this story says more about the quality of Maxwell House coffee or the taste buds of loyal Maxwell House drinkers, or both.

Under these circumstances, does Maxwell House’s recent announcement of their switch to 100% arabica beans really make a difference? Especially if we can secretly replace Maxwell House with Love My Carpet_® — just as Folgers Crystals did to “fancy restaurant coffee” decades ago. I’m just waiting for the Love My Carpet_® latte recipes…

Speaking of Folgers and fancy restaurant coffee, here’s a TV commercial clip from 1989, espousing the virtues of Folgers Crystals in place of coffee from “San Francisco’s Coffee Cantata gourmet coffee house”:

I believe this reference is to the one and the same Cantata Coffee on Upper Haight Street — which has quietly labored as an independent purveyor of fresh roasted beans for decades. The video shoot is obviously from nowhere near the Cantata, as it’s hard to merge the images in this video with Haight St. teen skate punks begging for change and a swearing street person marinating on the sidewalk in his own urine.