I used to be a Barista, before the leading edge of the Recession (finally noticed by the news media around 2007) caught up with me and caused me to have to close that. It was great fun, until then. It was also depressing at times, because I was all about quality and proper espresso, and Mass Marketing was quickly ruining the American taste for coffee. Star Bucks used to a be first rate espresso operation and is even credited with bringing espresso to America, which is not in the least bit true, but they did make it household word.
Then Star Bucks got sold. The new corporate owners didn’t care that much about quality, but only about profit, and that’s why Star Bucks is now nearly the worst coffee on the market now. Sugar and artificial flavors are much cheaper on the overhead than is actual coffee. Oh well… it’s now what the casual consumer expects his coffee to taste like, so, in this case, Star Buck’s Corporate wins.
I hear that the gentleman who started it and then sold it has been so disgusted with what has happened to his creation that he’s started a competitive chain now. I hope it succeeds; I’d love to see some quality get back into American espresso.
I bought the best coffee beans, natural flavorings, real chocolate (though I kept some syrup also for those who preferred that flavor over the real stuff (yuck!). I used a manual coffee machine, not an automatic. Proper espresso means adjusting the grind and the length of the shot and a variety of other settings according to the room temperature, the day’s humidity level and several other things; automatics won’t do that. Last I noticed, Star Buck’s employees have no awareness of any of this; they are in no way Baristas in the true sense. It’s another example of automation replacing skill.
I don’t like watching technology replace actual skill, because invariably Quality is always the loser.
Anyway… I was going to talk about Coffee Prices. The above is all background for that.
You may or may not remember or know that around 1997 (plus or minus, best I can recall) coffee prices suddenly did a massive jump. They did. I found out the reason why, being on the inside of the espresso industry. Star Bucks Corporate had set up warehousing for a three years’ supply of coffee, and, so, the coffee supply on the market was greatly… challenged. As always happens in such a case the prices went up. (Supply and Demand, it’s called, which is a fancy justification for price gouging, actually.)
So… because Star Bucks decided to sell you three year old coffee (that’s not the reason they did it, but it certainly is the most immediate result!) your price for coffee at the grocery store or the other bulk coffee supplier went up and never did come back down. Never came back down because it didn’t have to.
There are a great many examples of price going up on something due to extraordinary conditions, “oh we’ll lower when the emergency is over.” Only they never do. Music CD’s are another example, though that’s a different story I’ll post some other time. Also, when McDonalds started selling Chicken products, the cost of chicken in the grocery store went sky high and never did come back down, even after McDonalds starting farming their own chicken supply. Like I said, this happens over and over and over…
So, next time you patronize Star Bucks, be aware that it’s 3 year old coffee, more sugar, thickeners and artificial ingredients than “real espresso” ought to have and that they drove up bulk coffee prices for those of us who make our own, and they upset the originator of Star Bucks so badly that he’s now competing with them.
Corporates should be allowed to run around lose without a Keeper, you know?
As always… just my musings. Take this for what it’s worth to you.
Go have a cup of coffee!