Coffee: From Instant to Gourmet

Imagine for one moment that the world, all of a sudden, was devoid of all coffee. People would go frantic, cities would effectively slow down and even seize to function normally, and the global market would be debased of any stability. Small town communities would lose a piece of their spice, and daily trips to the local coffee shop would change meaning. The history of coffee is also our history, and we as humans have wrapped our lives around it.

These days, making a cup of coffee can be a labor of love. To make that perfect espresso, you extract the espresso, grab a chilled container and pour whole milk, and steam the milk while listening to the bubbly foam and hear the deep, almost musical pitch in the boiling milk. Then leave half an inch of space on top for the espresso, and very slowly pour. The espresso remains just above the milk, giving the sun set effect like that of an oil painting, and then add chocolate sprinkles on top to give it a picturesque appeal. There is an affinity of love for coffee, but when did this become a fact of life for millions in America and around the world? What does the future hold for us and our beloved beverage?

Three friends who were in search for the perfect cup of coffee jumped started the coffee revolution in 1971. Jerry Baldwyn opened a small Seattle shop, naming it after coffee drinking first mate, Starbuck, in the Moby Dick novel. Jerry Baldwyn decided early on to stick with roasting, laying the ground for success with a better tasting product. Since then, Starbucks can be found in over 12,000 locations and has dominated, and single-handedly reshaped the coffee industry. In 1982 Howard Schultz joined Starbuck's when the company was opening its 4th store. Schultz was sent to Italy on a mission to learn how the Italians are so successful at luring in new customers to their coffee houses, and was amazed by the sheer presentation put into serving a cup of coffee. Italy's famous Illy Café acquired specialty-cappuccino, and was named after the robes capriccio monks where. Illy credits Italian patience to the development of cappuccino. Perfecting the art of making espressos, they found that since espresso is weak in the coffee beans, the art is to stop extracting when the good stuffs in the cup. Usually prepared in a small cup, because large cup's ruin the strength and flavor of espresso. Schultz then set out to recreate that very Italian feel he discovered an ocean away.

The history of coffee did not begin with Howard Schultz and Starbuck's, it began centuries long ago. Coffee roasted probably picked up first in Ethiopia, where beans were accidently burned. In 1600, Arabs introduced coffee to Europe. One entry point is Vienna, during siege by Arab to conquer west; they surrounded Vienna for the finish. France George Sulcincki, delivered a message to the French for help, they came and swiftly won the battle. In their haste, the Arabs left bags of coffee; and with total enthusiasm, Frances George took the disserted bags with him. Frances later opened Vienna's very first coffee house, creating a new market and a new way of life for the locals. People in Vienna found that they disliked having grains in the bottom of their cup, so they developed filtering, and added milk for taste. Coffee for the first time was modified to fit an individual's taste.

Today, coffees elevated to a gourmet experience. Just as there are wine tasting events, so too are coffee tasting events for coffee enthusiasts searching for that perfect cup of coffee. Participants evaluate the vicinity, aroma, flavor, through smell and slurping-which evenly disperses in the participants mouth. These events are growing in popularity, and have gained a place in the coffee community.

A lot of people still buy canned coffee in supermarkets, but many want excellent, specialized coffee. Wanting a variety of flavors, Americans drink 60% specialty regularly, 15% everyday, and spend $10 Billion a year. Expanding outside the US, the response around the world is a breakthrough for the coffee bean. Part of this major breakthrough can directly be attributed to the universal coffee house experience customers can find at every Starbuck's. While this has largely been successful in increasing profits, it fails to earn the approval of everyone. Many people still rather go to a unique coffee house that's unlike any other. Unfortunately for those customers, it is increasingly more difficult to find that unique place for that perfect cup.

DELOCATOR.com is the alternative to the Starbuck's experience. Anyone can visit this site, type in their zip code, and find a near by coffee house with its own unique experience. Hundreds of thousands of small coffee houses are accessible and can be found. Despite this alternative, Starbuck's has bought out many chains and will continue to do so. For many, they have become the Big Bully on the specialty Block. While quality and location determines how many customers will visit, Starbuck's will always, so long as the company remains viable, buy its way into purchasing hotspots.

The coffee house has always been a place for social events, meeting people, relaxing, reading, and working, and it remains so in the modern era. This Coffee House ritual goes back 500 years, beginning in the Middle East. Wealthy people would have entire rooms reserved for a space where people could drink coffee and socialize. Poor people had coffee congas, which quickly became a source of vice for seduction and revolution. People increasingly talked politics, and in 1511 the governor of Mecca worried people were making fun of him and organizing a revolt, and instantly banned coffee houses. This attempt to squabble political descent would not last, and Sal ten of Cero reversed the order.

In France, the Café has homed caffeine inspired artists and intellectuals for generation's. Novelist Balzac- who admitted to drinking 40cups everyday- wrote "sparks shoot all the way to the brain". Coffee increased debate as it replaced wine and beer in the regular French diet. The French people would drink 1 litter of alcohol and work 14 hour work days. Newly sobered, people sat at tile tables and talked of issues and events of the day. Owners began putting newspapers around their shop's to increase debate. Coffee houses quickly gave an accessible space for people to gather and organize, and it led to revolution. The same drink that gave way to reason in France is the same that fueled colonialism in the Americas. Slaves toiled coffee farms, until they revolted two years after the French Revolution.

Coffee houses began to be fashionable places to be and to be seen in. Women were the first to embrace this new trend. Coffee was widely viewed as a woman's beverage and an aphrodisiac for men. It was believed to impede male sexual performance. In England, women were banned from coffee houses. As a result, a group of women in London put out an anti coffee pamphlet called the Madan Complaint. They claimed that when their husbands came home and declined sex; husbands would say they 'already had coffee'. Men wrote their own response called the 'Men's Anfwer to the Women's Petition against Coffee-', claiming coffee added spiritual essency to the sperm, and made them much better lovers. It was an open secret to men that the Coffee Houses reserved their second floor to prostitute services for their customers, while the men's wives remained oblivious.

In the 21st Century, coffee houses are places for music, drinking alcohol, do business, meet up with friends and family, and buy books. The feeling of community is still there, just as it was when the first coffee shop opened.

On the brink of revolution, America was a country of tea and beer drinkers. Ironically, coffee came over when British enacted the tea tax, and thereafter, the Boston Tea Party took place. Coffee quickly became a patriotic duty. Most Americans put beans on a frying pan and stirred them around before grinding them, and cook on a stove all day. Cowboys prided their strong coffee, and said it was so strong it could 'float a horse shoe'. Once The Gold Rush came around, people dashed to the west for new fortune. Among them was an opportunistic youth who was named Jim Folger. His family was so famous that Hemmer Merman included them in his novel Moby Dick. Folgers family was titans in the big sperm whale hunting industry, but once whales were low, they shipped off for the new country. San Francisco grew and established new, smaller communities where any warm beverage would do. Folger saw a golden opportunity and began selling coffee to the gold miners. In the late 1800s, Folgers gained fortune in coffee, not in gold.

As coffee grew in popularity, big fortune began accumulating on the retail end. Coffee grows at mercy of a fluctuating market and in 1880, so began the Boom-Bust cycle. There would be too much coffee, driving prices down, with producers producing less; price would rise and so on. By 1900, Brazilians grew way too much in their crops, and as a result, the price became so low there was talk of a revolt. They began to withhold coffee in hopes of driving the price up. However, the plan backfired with farmers continuing to grow, and before long Brazil was buried in unsold beans. Because of too much coffee and prices so low, in 1929 the coffee market crashed just weeks before Stock Market Crash. During the Depression, the struggling small labels disappeared, while larger, lower quality coffee sold coffee in cans and made record profits. Above the Mason-Dixon, most people bought their coffee in cans. The Supermarket outlet came on the scene, providing anyone who could afford it, a means of distribution that was unrivaled. This effectively gave the big labels an edge over their smaller, independent competitors. During WWII, instant coffee grew popular as servicemen craved a warm beverage that gave them renewed energy.

These large label companies sold refined coffee made from cheap beans, lessening their quality during the process. The battle of the cheapen blend roared over the market, even as people drank less coffee. To combat poor performance, the companies made more and more deluded coffee. Rather than improving taste, big labels also tried to improve sales through a new advertisement campaign. Maxwell House came out with the single most successful advertisement campaign for coffee known as the 'Mountain Grown pitch'. Unfortunately, consumers continued to drink less coffee, preferring soda instead. Decaf was sold to persuade people to drink more, but failed. By the mid 50s, prices doubled to 10 cents. Worse yet, bad weather in Brazil drove prices up. Producers lived by one question: Is there going to be a drought or freeze? In 1954 prices rose and Pan America Bureau invented the 'coffee break' to promote coffee consumption. But this didn't fix the problem of too many beans; leaving growers no better off than there enslaved ancestors.

America starts to learn coffee growers in 1960s.

Coffee cultivation has come a long way since discovery in Ethiopia over 1,000 years ago. Since there's no clear answer to how coffee consumption began for humans, there's a legend to fill that void. It is said there was a goat herder who would play songs on a pipe as he worked, but one day, his goats did not come to him, and once he found them, they were eating berries the man didn't recognize. He tried a handful and began to dance with a jolt of energy. Coffee continued to grow wild until beans found their way to Yemen, where coffee was first harvested in large amounts. In 1727, the coffee bean entered Brazil during a boarder dispute. Francisco Balata negotiated with the local government over the dispute, fell in love with the wife of governor of French in the mean time, and carried on an affair during the negotiations. When he left, she gave him flowers with fertile coffee berries in roses as token to show her esteem. No one was allowed to export berries at the time. Today, Brazil supplies 1 quarter of the worlds coffee. This new and prosperous industry has created modern Brazil, but at a cost. To maximize land for new crops, Brazil has cut down a major portion of their rainforest. They have also invested in new farm technology, which allow producers to make a profit, even with prices fairly low.

Until recently Americans knew little of coffee production. In the 1960's a fictional character was created, Yan Beldez. This Columbian coffee grower embodied the average small time grower. Within six months after promotion began, consumption went up. The real farmers, however, were dedicated to maximizing the quality of their crop, only red berries were acceptable, and were paid $1.50 per basket. Many farmers can turn out 6-8 baskets a day. A major problem facing these farmers, is the fact that consumers pay too little to ensure their income and standard of living. In Brazil, the small producer faces the danger of being bought out and left with nowhere else to go but the drug market. For farmers, the drug market never goes bust. Coffee growers face obstacles, and it remains to be seen what specialty coffee means for them.

Fair Trade and Starbucks

The Berkeley Coffee Initiative requires that within the city of Berkeley, all brewed coffee must be sold through Fair Trade. Fair Trade is meant to secure small farmers' standard of living and crop maintenance. These efforts and more are aimed at preventing a local person from lending money upfront to the farmer in exchange for crop yield later on. If that farmer's crop has a bad year and falls short of the promised yield, the local buys out the farm. So begins the cycle of poverty. Eventually, farmers came together to form cooperatives, and contacted organizations around the world to set up Fair Trade agreements. The farmers are promised a fair price for whatever their crop's return, and are thereby given a level of income security.

Another major obstacle farmer's face is the fact that there are too few coffee distributors: Folgers owned by Proctor and Gamble; Maxwell House, owned by Philip Morris, the largest cigarette company; Pap Sarah Lee; Nestlé; and Starbucks. Starbucks makes more money per pound than any other company. The company buys 2% of the world's coffee, while the much larger companies buy 50%. But Starbucks remains the largest specialty coffee company and so holds a unique place in the market.

In 1999, protesters trashed Starbucks in Seattle, during the World Trade Summit. The protest was all over the media and became a real crisis for Starbucks, so in response to new public demand, the company began to change its image as an enlightened multicorporation. At time of the protest, the company was the single largest supporter of CARE, but was perceived as the 'Big Guy'. The events in Seattle have moved the company along faster than it otherwise would have. Now it sells 1.6% Fair Trade Coffee, selling organic, and 15% of the coffee sold supports growers who abide by strict certification standards. Thanks to the certificates strict requirements farmers need to abide by, the soil of these farms are in better shape; the wildlife in neighboring areas are healthier; the coffee berries are of higher quality; and water sources are void of toxic contamination. As a result from these measures, a crop now yields three times more than before certification. In addition to Fair Trade, the Rainforest Alliance Certificate addresses the depletion of vital rainforest, and contaminated lakes. Unfortunately, this merely accounts to a small percentage of the overall market.

The history of coffee has taken the coffee bean through the ups and downs of our own history. The social gatherings, the revolutions, and global stability have been marked and shaped in some way or form by this ever popular drink. Small communities are enriched by the aroma of local coffee houses, and in the 21st Century, they are connected to the small farmer who provided them their perfect cup. The global markets are continuously strengthened as trade agreements ensure stability and confidence in an ever viable product. Thanks to these agreements, and those that will come in the future, coffee is no longer the cause of never ending poverty, but actually the solution. Like the drink itself, the history of coffee is rich with war, love, and cooperation. The future, no doubt, will be just as rich, if not richer.