Wow! Starbucks has taken a giant hit in the last year! Is it really that surprising though? If you are a coffee lover — who isn’t interested in what Charbucks has to offer, you are probably a little glad that the dominating coffee giant is losing face quickly.

It wasn’t long ago that Starbucks was opening a “Specialty Coffee” shop on pretty darn near every bloody corner near and far. And it didn’t take long for people to lose interest either. Why? Well, there are probably as many reasons are there are Starbucks stores (Yes, stores……these places are hardly cafes or coffee houses!!). The feel that the company started off with was that of what Howard Shultz liked to refer to as “the third place”. That is that there is Home, Work and Starbucks……sorry Howard, but its hardly a place I’d want to spend much time. Actually, when I’m on the road, I’ll take a Tim Hortons coffee or a Dunkin Donuts coffee over a burnt, gut rotting cup of *$’s! And thats coming from a Roaster of nearly 6 years!

Whats happend then? Many, many changes have occured within Starbucks. The worst step was probably moving from glorious bins full of (burnt) beans over to bagged apparatus that customers were apparently expected to purchase based on what was written on the bag. You can make a package as fancy as you like, Howard, but really…..its whats inside that counts! Step two……remove all of your wonderful, La Marzocca manual espresso machines from your shops and replace them with push button vending machines! What is this……McStarbucks???? (and speaking of the McD’s, aren’t they pushing specialty coffee now?? Or is that a thing of the past too??

Now, in recent news, Starbucks is admitting the closure of 61 locations in Australia. That doesn’t really comes as much of a surprise though. Australians have a long history of great coffee.

What goes up……must come down.

Over and out!

Now gimme some coffee!

Ever stood in the grocery store, facing the coffee shelves and wondered just who it is that buys all of that stuff? All sorts of wonderful marketing gimmicks confront you…Full Flavour, Fresh Roast, Gold Coffee. There are some haunting secrets behind all of those dusty vac packs and oversized cans of folgers and nescafe. Secrets that I’ll reveal, but I won’t be held responsible for!

It was about 4 years ago that I attended the first SCAA conference that I’d been to. I was pretty new to roasting coffee, and very eager to learn more about the beans I was roasting. I was overwhelmed by the information available….and to be frank, out right disgusted by some of it as well.

I knew for a fact that there was a big difference between the coffees I roasted and sold and the coffees found on supermarket shelves. These giant cans of Maxwell house and Nescafe (which oddly enough means ‘not coffee’ in some languages) perplexed me. Why on earth would one want to purchase such a vast amount of coffee??

Coffee is like bread. Bread goes stale within a week or less…….same goes for coffee. Really, no matter what you try to do to keep it fresh, staling is inevitable. Why then are these coffees on supermarket shelves showing an expiry date that is somewhere between 8 months and infinity?

To put it simply, those coffees are allowed to go stale, to go bad, before they even leave the processing plant! Yes, odd, I know. You don’t really find stale bread sitting one a supermarket shelf, well……I suppose Melba Toast could be construed as stale, but hardly. After these coffees are roasted…..coffees like Nescafe, Maxwell House, Folgers, etc. They are allowed to go stale for god knows how long before they are packed into those wonderful, freshness preserved packs that you see lining the shelves, covered in dust. And those oddly infinite expiry dates…..well, this staling process makes sure that the coffee you buy will be flavourless and dead regardless of when you purchase it…..the day it arrives at the store and is put on the shelf, or a year later when it is still sitting there waiting for the unsuspecting consumer to pick it up, read the marketing gimmicks and take it home for a taste.

So……all in all, if you are someone who really does enjoy coffee, my god man, pull yourself together! Get yourself out, find a roastery nearby, and sample some true, fresh roasted coffee. Your tongue will love you for it…..and now that you know those others are all stale, your mind will love you for it as well.

Its not the end of the world, you can still turn yourself around and hope that you long forget how those capitalist coffee wannabees have tortured you so!

Now….gimme some coffee!