Posted by deCadmus on 05 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Coffee
- Say what you will about the Grey Lady’s reporting, they still do a great obit, and their remembrance of Alfred Peet is warm and packed with fondness. More still, at The Daily Californian, and The Seattle Post Intelligencer.
- A little late to the party? The big news this week is that Starbucks has entered the fray of single-cup coffee merchants. First question, what took them so long? Second question, why choose Tassimo, a single-cup machine that’s a… what’s the word? Oh yeah… loser.
Kraft launched Tassimo in France in 2004 and later extended the business to the United States, Canada and other countries.
But the business failed to live up to initial expectations and in January Kraft decided to take a $245 million asset-impairment charge related to the business, largely due to lower manufacturing capacity utilization.
Big picture: Starbucks’ entry to the market can only help sell *everybody’s* brewers as they’ll bring more awareness to single-cup at home than any ten other roasters combined. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the first comment found at Gizmodo’s entry on the news. ;)
- Finally — and this one is worth it just for the photoshopped to-go cup — word on Starbucks entry into Russia.
“[W]hile Russians have taken quickly to coffee, drinking patterns here differ from the West. Many coffee shops stay open round the clock, and people like to while away an hour or two slowly drinking and smoking. Coffee House, with 90 shops in Moscow, doesn’t just serve coffee, but beer and vodka too.
Starbucks spokesperson Kerry Irwin confirmed that except for some ‘local content’ in the food offered, the company would not be changing anything about its global model to cater to local taste.”
How do you spell glasnost, again?
Posted by deCadmus on 30 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Coffee
- Hey, that’s pretty savvy for Wall Street. TheStreet.com’s Eileen Gunn takes a peek at Fair Trade — and Fair Trade coffee, in particular. For a publication that’s altogether dedicated to Free Trade it’s a remarkably balanced, and only remotely snarky read. Still…
“[T]his is where my capitalist instincts start to twitch. I’m always skeptical when someone tries to argue to me that subsidies are simultaneously superfluous and essential.
Moreover, those prices include a 10-cent premium for social and environmental programs (such as building schools and health clinics and teaching new farming techniques). In 2006, those dimes added up to roughly $91 million in social aid from the U.S. to growers in places such as Honduras, East Timor and Guatemala. That’s nice, but is it trade — communities benefiting from earned profit and prosperity — or is it non-tax-deductible charity?”
That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it? The naked capitalist is entirely confunded about the difference between charity, and simply doing the right thing. For them the difference between a hand-up and a handout is entirely a question of whether or not you get a tax write-off. (sigh)
Just the same, I’m always happy to see capitalists twitch. Good for the soul.
- Meanwhile, the big kids continue to play with the box it came in. Procter & Gamble is suing Kraft over packaging. Since introducing its plastic AromaSeal canister in 2003, P&G has seen sales of Folger’s coffee climb. Now that Kraft has launched its Maxwell House brand coffee in a similar container P&G has cried foul. ‘Course the real foul here is their coffee, which, were it lavished with the same attention as its packaging, would be something to talk about. Meanwhile, both brands continue to lose ground to specialty coffee, in the grocery and beyond.
- Is somebody being clever? The headline reads, Uganda: Coffee Producers Are the Biggest Losers. While the article speaks to the unequal share of profits that coffee growers receive in the Ugandan coffee trade, it could as well be speaking to the latest trend among Ugandan exporters: actually *losing* the coffee. In just the last few months more than 20 containers (each with about 20 tons of goods) have arrived at their destination filled with — wait for it — dirt. Apparently the coffee was stolen before it left port, and they had to put *something* in the box.
Hey, that’s kinda like the story just before it, huh?
