Posted by TheShot on 06 Dec 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew
We love a good dose of sarcasm now and then. We’ve also been known to slag on McCafés while praising the coffee standards in Australia. So we had to highlight this sarcastic gem from Australia’s The Punch today: G’day from the McCafe…. Have a nice day! | Article | The Punch. Apparently Oprah Winfrey is [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 08 Apr 2010 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee
The mainstream media barely understand that qualitative differences exist between really good coffee, good coffee, and average coffee — let alone that some of the differences might be worth shelling out a few extra bucks on. CNN is one of the more recent outlets to ponder the differences: $13 coffee worth the brew-haha? – CNN.com. [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 30 Mar 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Local Brew
This neighborhood café opened in late 2009 with the idea of serving sexual perversions and coffee in the same location. This is one of the more obvious examples of how coffeeshops are being fetishized in the Bay Area. We’ve written about espresso bars in bicycle shops, laundromats, video stores, runners shops, motorcycle shops, gardening supply [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 31 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew
This past year, The Atlantic magazine has been no stranger to the subject of coffee. They finish out the year on the topic of coffee tourists: Coffee Worth Traveling For – The Atlantic Food Channel. We’ve always used the phrase coffee tourist in a much more derogatory context — e.g., “kopi luwak is a gag [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Starbucks
What a strange newsweek it’s been in the coffee world. The best way to characterize it?: What’s old is suddenly new again. Tuesday we had Starbucks’ latest cry for attention/help/suicide prevention with their mysterious “04.08.08″-on-a-lame-paper-cup campaign. Essentially, the publicity stunt announced the launch of their “new” Pike Place Roast and a “new” return to the [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 18 Jan 2008 | Tagged as: Restaurant Coffee
Earlier this week, the SF Chronicle ran a piece on the escalating coffee wars among area restaurants: What’s New: Restaurants brewing up gourmet blends. With the likes of the SJ Mercury News running front-page stories this week on the coffee war between McDonald’s and Starbucks, hopefully places that sell $18 hamburgers might try to outdo [...]
[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 29 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Restaurant Coffee
The post title is the question of the day. If I may paraphrase an old quote from a previous post — where we asked, “How does the fool who knows nothing about wine impress his guests?” — the answer is: by buying the most expensive coffee they can find — along with a good story [...]
[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 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 [...]
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