You want to make money? Open an organic fair trade coffee-tea joint with whole wheat organic pastries, and stevia or guave instead of sugar -- and with no nuts.. in the food.. call it "Starbar's Second Cup's Free" or "Ishmael's". Tell them that one coffee is $X and refills are free to third cup. You are selling sugar, and atmosphere, not coffee, but it helps to have fresh ground arabica beans. The best bean mixes are 60% arabica from Columbia, with 30% nigerian. Ten percent can be other varieties. If you buy only red beans and roast your own, the coffee will never be bitter. Hillside mountain beans with good soil drainage and mist in the valleys produces the best coffee. The best tea also comes from highland areas of India that are fairly wet.
Coffee houses made money in Europe since shortly after the Mongol invasion because they served really high quality pastries and coffee. The sugar addicted people and the pastries were works of art. People would reserve tables in the evening, dine with real silverware. The sugar and caffeine of course were the addictive agents and no alcohol ensured that you did not get bad customers. Some chefs became famous for their fruit and icing concoctions. Wholly different market than SB, which was named after a Melville character.
Starbucks is a lifestyle coffee house. It fits the busy NA style. It's food/coffee is so, so. Pastries, semi. Second Cup's coffee is better. When those chains first opened, they knew so little about coffee that they accepted bags of the same beans relabled to provide different varieties from unscrupulous suppliers. Now they are more discriminating.
What Starbucks still has not tumbled too is that it is a the coffee machine and the type/freshness of the bean that makes the flavour of coffee. Also the water must be just so. You cannot make good coffee with just any water. Also percolated coffee tastes much different than drip, boiled or machine made coffee. Drip coffee is way better, if the machine is stainless steel and cleaned properly and not with soap.
Lines must be high chrome stainless and perc rates and grind must adjusted with a micrometer. That is what made Italian coffee famous. They used so-so beans but their machines made the coffee taste fantastic. Espresso, etc.. are better coffees. Why? Methodology, chemistry. Like any solution process, it is very delicate and must be carefully controlled. that is why you can make better coffee than Starbucks with fresh store bought red beans, your own coffee roaster and grinder, a stop watch, a cheese cloth, and boiling distilled water in a nickel steel pot. You can control the amount of caffeine in the coffee with how you make it and that controls the taste. Plastic coffee makers ruin the taste because of crud that develops in their system or on the glassware, as do certain waters as they interfere with the solubility of the ingredients. Make coffee with distilled water and then with tap water. Different? You betcha.
EC<:-} |
