Summer fun food and drink - Starbucks in decline chapter three · Tuesday July 29, 2008 by colin newell
In the race to win a large slice of the Australian coffee market, Starbucks acknowledged experiencing the business equivalent of a blown head gasket. 61 “under-performing” stores to be shuttered out of its total Aussie portfolio of 84.
Starbucks ambitions to be Aussie’s caffeinated Billabong of choice and its subsequent yewey have left investors and speculators saying hooroo to share value.
Buggah. Explanation of some of the words above? Aussie Slang
With 15,000 coffee shops globally and 600 stores in the US heading to the long paddock one has to ask: Where does it all end? 12,000 employees in the U.S. could be flipping pages in the help wanted section – so what’s next?
In my opinion, I see this more as a stage of healthy weight loss – kind of like Marlon Brando shedding a few pounds… at least… while he was alive.
Ok. Maybe not a really good example.
Starbucks can afford to shrink a little when you think about it for a moment. What other business can you name, that when you look down your main street in your town… you see a Starbucks… and when you move your head ever so slightly to the left or right… you see another Starbucks. I dare say you would not find that with a McDonalds… or a Subway… or… whatever. You get the point.
Heck. Starbucks is more ubiquitous than Vitreous Floaters – and more common than the Head Cold – There is so much Starbucks coffee consumed in Seattle, Washington alone that the caffeine levels in Puget Sound spike measurably at 10:20 AM and 3:20 PM every weekday.
So they can shrink a little. Sure their share price is falling faster than a gray squirrel base jumping from the penthouse level of my apartment building. This will be a golden opportunity at some point in the near future. After all, we are talking about coffee here – a infinitely renewable resource – with a captive audience… hopelessly addicted… I mean dependent on a healthful beverage rich in… antioxidants… yea.
One other thing – Starbucks would be well served to abort the gut-bomb breakfast items – The TurboChef, a malfunctioning Star-Trek replicator type device that reconstitutes breakfast sandwiches made several light years from here is not a great addition to a place that is supposed to smell like coffee. If I want a Sausage McMuffin (made fresh and on the spot…) you know where I am going to get it from!
And the squirrel. He is fine. Terminal velocity for a squirrel is about 3 miles an hour. He dusted himself off, threw back a quad espresso and got back to the serious task of getting his nuts together.
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Summer fun food and drink - Pemberton Music Festival afterglow · Monday July 28, 2008 by colin newell
How is (was) the day after Pemberton Music Festival like Beijing (a mere 2 weeks before the Olympics)?
Answer: Pollution. Garbage. Clutter. Rubbish. Discards.
There are a handful of things that really get my goat… and one of them are the people that get all Enviro on the World, all Hippied out in their split-window VW’s (one of the most polluting vehicles on the planet) along with virtually anything else made by Volkswagen… girls who eschew shaving their armpits and dudes who eschew personal hygiene for a weekend… who espouse Groovy, Peace and Love all over the place…
And then litter the f*cking crap out of our pristine countryside.
What is wrong with you people?
A news clip showed the absolutely astounding detritus, flotsam and jetsam; $300 dollar tents used once. Camp stoves, still warm. Coffee percolators, still warm. Clothing. Sleeping bags. Un-opened bags of food. Discarded without a thought.
Begs the question: What is wrong with you people?
I am no saint, but these huge music festivals are quite literally the last places I would want to be on Earth – and one of the reasons has been illustrated above.
Yea. If I want to hang out with pigs, I will go to the farm for an afternoon…
And pick up after myself.
So. You do the same please.
Peace out.
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Summer fun food and drink - Bottomless in Australia · Sunday July 27, 2008 by colin newell
As a Canadian, I have fun with the Australians. I mean, we are a lot alike. Canadians and Aussies love coffee. But currently, the Aussies have one up on us here in North America…
Click on photo at left for the zippy view
Their culture is espresso-centric.
That means that everything is based on espresso coffee. Everything is built upon it.
In Canada, we are less focused… and anything goes. That means coffee shops that pride themselves on their espresso, their drip coffee, their mud, their latte art, their French press and their Clover… and so on. And so on. And so on.
Oh yea. Forgot one. Our Tim Horton’s.
In Australia, the coffee experience springs from a point source and that point source is espresso coffee. And from an esoteric point of view, this allows a people (the Aussies) and a culture (being Australian) to be the absolute best that anyone can be at something (espresso culture).
Representing this wave is Crema Magazine in Australia – they have been around for a few years documenting the ascent of coffee greatness… I mean, espresso greatness. I have been fortunate enough to have a few pictures published in Crema magazine – which is cool… And I would love to do more… If they would let me. So. Hats off to the great people at Crema Magazine!
Oh yea – Photo above is of the single boiler Innova espresso – modified and sold by Geir Oglend of the Drumroaster Cafe on Vancouver Island – to be reviewed on CoffeeCrew.Com real soon.
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Summer fun food and drink - Great coffee in Panama - a downside · Sunday July 27, 2008 by colin newell
Panama’s gourmet coffees fetch record prices for their prized flavors – and I know all too well just how wonderful Panama La Hacienda Esmeralda Geisha tastes – but the increasing demand has convinced some growers to clear land illegally… and plant in one of the country’s few protected highland forests.
Here are some facts. Coffee employs 12 to 15 million people World-wide, many of them complete families… all ages. And many of them live in a cycle of poverty. The average coffee bean changes hands over 100 times on its way from the coffee bush to your cup – often by people who never actually see the often – who live a World away from the environment that actually produces coffee.
The internet, on various levels, has changed some of that – for at least a some of these hard working folks: Online auctions and farm to roaster direct purchases have put the money where it belongs – in the hands of the farms (fincas) and the farmers and their community.
The upside is, the average family has gone from earning pennies on the pound to several dollars for a pound of green coffee – coffee you and I regularly pay 10 to 15$ a pound for roasted. This means food, health care, shelter (for the farmers) and an education for the children – and great coffee for you.
For Panama, having small tracts of incredible coffee that has been yielding upwards of $130/pound in the marketplace, the temptation to exploit this has been irresistible . Panama’s Environmental Protection Agency has uncovered rogue tracts of land in the Volcan Baru National Park, raising concerns that more park land could be endangered as the demand increases.
The nature preserve is ringed with coffee farms growing the country’s “geisha” beans, often described as the champagne of coffee for their subtle jasmine-like taste highly sought after by boutique roasters from North America, Europe and Japan. I have had this coffee. The descriptions do not do it justice – and if you do a google search, you will see that the net has been sprouting new Geisha sites every week.
And now, an insatiable demand for geisha beans have lured some growers well inside the park’s boundaries. It is ironic, but not surprising considering the kind of hardship coffee farmers have lived with.
The point of all of this? Get to know your coffee when you are drinking it. Get to know the farmers, the processes and the economy of coffee – look beyond the rim of your coffee cup and get the big picture.
