Foundation Laid For New Cuvee Roasting Facility

Spoke with Mike McKim yesterday. They have laid the foundation for their new roasting facility in Austin. Cuvee weathered Ike with little difficulty. There was no significant damage to the Spring, TX roasting facility. The biggest obstacle, according to Mike, was the subsequent power outage. Fortunately, Cuvee was able to get their coffee roasted by Counter Culture, a NC-based specialty coffee roaster that is well-respected nationally.

Javalato Still Open

Spoke with staff at Javalato this morning. They are open. They are unsure about the effect of CEOTA's collapse on operations, but are assuming they will be open for business as CEOTA was a partial owner.

Supreme Bean/Coffee Exchange of the Americas Mystery

CEOTA headed by Carl Olivieri is apparently out of business. Reports from the West Coast have its stores, under the name Supreme Bean, closing. Attempts by the press to reach Mr. Olivieri have been unsuccessful. DFW locals might be familiar with Javalato--a popular shop also bought out by CEOTA.

Which Is More Virtuous, Consistency or Best Performance?

I guess the subject line say it all, but perhaps it should be given the alternative title: Giving Experimentation A Chance.

Not counting my wasted youth as a denizen in the cafes of Germany, France, and Italy, my first experience of coffee was in a corporate setting, where consistency was at minimum the equal of quality. Of course, the quality was poor as I, and many others now know, but the message of consistency continued to resonate with me long after I saw the error in product quality.

When I left corporate coffee to manage for a specialty coffee roaster-retailer, I took the message of consistency with me. And, for the length of my tenure there, I was tenacious in rooting out inconsistencies. Then, when I resigned my position in order to return to Texas and take care of family, Brenda and I made plans to take the return trip slow. Things were about to change.

I call my return trip to Texas the "West Coast Coffee Tour 2007" because, though we did visit friends, and see typical tourist sights, we spent a great deal of time and effort making the scene at some of the most-talked-about, and "best" coffee houses from Seattle to Portland to Los Angeles.

One of the learnings from that survey was that there was no consistency except great quality. From menus, to drink recipes, to sizes, to cafe feel--the was so much variance; so much experimentation. I suppose that trip alone was responsible for turning me from a dogmatist to a philosopher.

When asked, how long a shot should take, I can no longer say 'X' seconds. When questioned about shot volume, I can no longer tell anyone that it is 'X' ounces (or cl). "It depends." There is no simple answer. I can pull great shots at various volumes and times. How much crema is good? Answer: It depends. If it is light tan and papery smelling, it doesn't matter how much crema, it is bad.

When I got back to Texas, I had the opportunity to work with equipment and coffee that spanned the spectrum of quality and condition. With a mind set of no rules, I was able to produce great and unexpected results under these varied circumstances. I have now seen such variance in technique result in such excellence in the cup, and experienced it by my own hand, that I am no longer frustrated by inconsistency, merely intrigued at the new possibilities.

Please do not get the idea from this post that I no longer see consistency as desirable. The ability to reproduce a result in the cup is vital, but I think in our rush to develop standards, we have lost a grasp of the magic possible in espresso. It is that magic that fires the imagination and makes espresso an event not a product. And baristi and retailers should not forget or abandon experimentation in favor of rigid standards.

A Brandon Sighting

Brenda saw Brandon and his wife, Shannon yesterday. Brandon is the founder and ex-owner of Jupiter House. Don't think he makes it into town that much anymore. He and his family are doing some organic farming out in Ponder...got to talk to that cat!

Will The Clover Put Green Back In Starbucks' Future?

After several announcements from Starbucks regarding disappointing earnings, and Wall Street's abandonment of its once darling retailer, things looked pretty bleak for Big Green. But people forget the power that can be wielded once the giant is stirred.

Effortlessly, Starbucks purchased The Coffee Equipment Company and, in a single stroke, positioned itself to protect its market share from being poached at the top by quality-minded independents.

The Clover was the latest preoccupation of coffee fetishists, but curiously, few saw how its networking capabilities made it a highly-scalable, enterprise technology. Fewer still spoke of how this fact made it a technology ripe for the plucking. And yet, in retrospect, it could not be more clear that this, not beautiful boutique coffees at Stumptown's annex, would be its future. Each coffee can be profiled, roasted, packaged and shipped. That coffee can rollout on a specific day with Starbucks IT staff having uploaded its profile and dosing to the Clover at that, and every other store which will serve the coffee. The Clover can even be monitored remotely for certain maintenance issues, maintenance staff dispatched if there is a problem needing immediate attention.

In theory, it is an extremely elegant solution to the Starbucks' challenges. It addresses Starbucks' challenge of having a product of high-enough quality to be competitive with small-batch roasters and third wave coffee shops nipping at away at it's market share amongst consumers looking for the finest coffees. By having complete command of the coffee's extraction profile at each location, Starbucks has removed improperly calibrated equipment from its challenges. It also minimizes the need for highly-trained baristas. All things being equal, having the Clover should result in coffee of much higher cup quality and a high degree of consistency in the extraction regardless of location.

Of course, is Starbucks coffee good enough to compete cup to cup with the best small batch roasters? No. Even at its best, it will fall short. And will Starbucks be able to out-cheap its competitors at the bottom, Dunkin' Donuts and McDonalds? No.

Though the move to buy The Coffee Equipment Company and deny potential competitors access to the technology was smart, it is not so much an offensive move, as a defensive one. Starbucks position is defensive at top and bottom, hoping to hold most of its market share, but effectively giving up it's most discerning coffee customers, and ceding the commodity consumers to companies like McDonalds, who can generate even better economies-of-scale to beat up a competitor.

In a later post I'll talk about why it is good for independents that Starbucks has denied them this technology.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.