The National Coffee Association (NCA) just recently released their annual report on coffee-drinking trends in the U.S.: National Coffee Drinking Trends Main Page – National Coffee Association. Yes, the NCA — those dinosaur progenitors of the SCAA, from way back when percolators and instant coffee that tasted like ground kitty litter roamed the earth — is still around and kicking. Relevance be damned. But the NCA publishes an annual coffee consumption report based on national market research.

The short of the report this year? Apparently 18- to-24-year olds are responsible for most of the increases in coffee consumption in the past year (daily, weekly, and annual consumption). They are also the only age group that showed an increase in daily gourmet coffee beverage consumption, and they had largest increase in weekly gourmet coffee beverage consumption. Apparently you need a lot of coffee to stay awake hanging out on Facebook all the time. However, people 40 and up showed the largest growth in consumption of gourmet coffee beverages over the past year.

Also of note: last year the market penetration of coffee among American adults surpassed that of soft drinks, reversing a two-decades-old trend.

Today’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that “iced coffee is a hot commodity, surveys show”: Some like it iced. According to studies from the SCAA and NCA, iced coffee consumption is on the rise — accounting for 6 percent of weekly U.S. coffee consumers, as compared with 4 percent five years ago. The article also attributes the increased popularity of iced coffee with warmer temperatures and younger coffee drinkers.

Of course, if I was a voice-cracking, acne magnet of a teenager hanging out at the mall in Sarasota, FL at one of these cheesier new “me too” coffee chains, I’d skip the coffee and pour liquid nitrogen down my shorts for that matter.

There’s been a lot of “he said, she said” going on between Starbucks and representatives of the Ethiopian coffee trade lately. Ethiopian Sidamo and Harar (two generally excellent bean stocks, mind you) were up for trademark protection when a “certain voting member” of the U.S. National Coffee Association (or NCA, a business interest legacy of coffee’s darker ages) effectively blocked passage at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Passage of the trademark requests would have enabled Ethiopian coffee farmers to secure more of their coffee’s retail price plus access to additional demand of some 48 million pounds of the stuff. Fingers started pointing, beginning with U.K.-based, anti-poverty charity, Oxfam — who singled out Starbucks as instigating the NCA block. Oxfam called Starbucks “corporate bullies”. Starbucks responded with denial, saying that they had nothing to do with the block vote.

I’ve refrained from posting any articles on the issue until the dust settled a bit, and today the online site for the German magazine, Der Spiegel, seems to have done the best job yet of explaining the intricate problems and tradeoffs behind this showdown: A Hot Cup of Money: Starbucks, Ethiopia, and the Coffee Branding Wars – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News.

UPDATE: November 28, 2006:
And if you thought it couldn’t get uglier: Ethiopian coffee trademark dispute may leave Starbucks with nasty taste – Markets – Times Online.


UPDATE: February 23, 2007:
In today’s The Voice (London), lawyers representing the Ethiopian government finally went on the offensive: STARBUCKS ACCUSED OF MISLEADING THE PUBLIC OVER TRADEMARK ROW. This after Starbucks recent public (mis?)information campaign, which used everything from New York Times full page ads to videos published on YouTube to discredit the Ethopian growers’ case as ‘illegal’.


UPDATE: March 3, 2007:
The Legal Times offered a more detailed technical view of the dispute: LegalTimes.com – Ethiopian Coffee Dispute Runs Hot and Cold.


UPDATE: June 22, 2007:
On Wednesday, Starbucks and Ethiopian coffee reps came to something of a truce/agreement over the issue: Starbucks, Ethiopia reach licensing deal.

OK — it’s only Tuesday, and I have already found the winner for the most imbecilic coffee-related news item of the week.

So what do you do if you’re a coffee marketer desperate for an angle? How about selling coffee with those yellow rubber LIVESTRONG wristbands? Nah — not trendy enough. OK, how about a reality TV show about our coffee? Too expensive. Hey — all the media is talking about “blogging,” whatever that is. That’s the hot thing now. So let’s sell coffee specifically for bloggers!

Oh, if only I was joking: Boca Java Creates First Gourmet Coffee for Bloggers: Bloggers Blends; Bloggers Will Create the Next Coffee Blend for Boca Java at www.BloggersFuel.com

Oh sure, I may have had a personal Web page since 1994, but slap the “blogger” title on me and I am nudge-nudge-wink-wink in the new coffee achievers generation.

I dare you to read a few lines from this press release and keep from soiling yourself from laughing so hard:

Boca Java, the premier, direct-to-consumer gourmet coffee company that fresh roasts-to-order, today launched Bloggers Blends, one of the first product lines designed specifically for the rapidly expanding blogger universe. Boca Java’s new products, along with the company’s launch of a new blogger-specific website, www.BloggersFuel.com, will, for the first time, directly target this community as a consumer demographic and enable bloggers to purchase, create and name new coffee blends in the product line.

Now only if I had some diaper wipes designed specifically for the rapidly expanding blogger universe…

UPDATE: Sept. 9. 2006
The untold story after this article was that I took the bait. I was so intrigued by how badly this might turn out that I even agreed to blog about the quality of their coffee here as required. But almost six months after signing up and being approved by their marketing department as an official Blogger Blends taster, not a single bean of coffee has shown up at my door. Today there are no longer any mentions that any beans will be coming whatsoever.

You might think that this promotion could have at least cynically achieved one thing on the marketing front: getting bloggers’ e-mails on the subscriber lists for their spam sales newsletter. But even that, after a brief handful of occasional sales e-mails, was handled half-heartedly and eventually died.

No matter, their Web site posted blogger reviews regardless. Either they were scared off by me (I honestly was going to give them a CoffeeRatings.com-style “fair & balanced” review) … or their marketing department has been busily creating virtual bloggers around the Internet to forge rave about their coffee. One has to wonder…

UPDATE: Oct. 6, 2008
It just goes to show… a bad idea with a little spit polish can be exhumed two years later by people naïve enough to expect a different outcome: Joffrey’s Introduces “Coffee 2.0” for Bloggers; Free Brew for Mashable Readers – Mashable.