It is no secret to those that know me that I am somewhat in love with coffee, both as a beverage and as an industry. It is hard not to be, coffee has come a long way in the last twenty years and has some much further to go. One of the things that I love about the coffee industry is that it is such an organic entity, one that is still discovering itself, and is willing to admit that there is a long way to go before it is where it wants to be.
One of the top “problems” with the coffee industry is one that is somewhat unique, or at least it is not a problem that I am aware of in other industries - at least not on such a large scale. This problem, which is actually more of a hurdle, is the customer. Possibly the best known business saying is “the customer is always right”, in the coffee industry this could not be further from the truth. I would say that a good ninety percent of the people who walk through the doors of my work are massively oblivious and misinformed, or at the very least under-informed, about coffee and the intricacies it has to offer. Much of this comes from coffee becoming part of pop-culture, with the rise of Starbucks there was a surge of interest in coffee, however the interest in coffee seemed to be less on the coffee itself and more on the almost elitist status associated with Starbucks.
This form of pop-coffee is only the most recent problem, decades before Starbucks came around the marketing departments of the largest coffee sellers of coffee in the states started up selling things such as the roast level of coffee or the convenience of pre-ground beans. Really since the advent of coffee, the flavor has taken a back seat to the caffeine content. Even the discovery of coffee (depending on who you talk to) is based not on its flavor, but rather its mind-altering effects.
Which tangentially brings me back to the problem of the customer, most people drink coffee for different reasons than the specialty coffee industry would like. At the moment your average consumer is essentially a frat boy, who drinks for the effects rather than the enjoyment. Companies like Intelligentsia spend massive amounts of time sourcing absolutely stunning coffees, more time roasting them, followed by more time training their baristas, only to have all that work rendered more or less moot in the five seconds it takes for someone to add cream and sugar to their coffee.
That is not to say that cream and sugar have no place in specialty coffee, without cream - or rather milk - the cappuccino and other milk based drinks would not exist, and even during barista competitions some specialty drinks made for the judges include sugar. The problem, at least the way I see it, is that while those in the industry are using these elements to accentuate some part of the coffee - our customers are not. Most people who add things to their coffee are generally doing so out of habit, they are preemptively working to correct a problem that does not (for the most part) exist for specialty coffee. People have known coffee as a dark and bitter beverage for so long that it is almost like a cultural mental block.
Enough ranting for now, more tomorrow…
