the unpleasures of coffee
August 15, 2011 – 4:28 pmso what if the culture of specialty coffee, with all its focus on quality and impulse for celebration, also carries a certain narrow way of thinking that ends up handicapping the cause in the long run?
obviously, this is where you click, “close tab.” back to teh twitterz! right, yes, but it’s a question i can’t really escape. the main impetus is wendell berry’s old, seminal essay on the pleasures of eating. and if there’s anything this blog does any more, it is to cookerize steaming heaps of shaky food-coffee analogies. so we’re thinking aloud here, perhaps blogging for ourselves.
the idea is that the fatal problem with modern eating is that it has ceased to be an agricultural act. foodies and locavores aside, eating is largely an isolated, anonymous act of personal consumption. why is this? well, berry’s notion is that the specialization of production leads to the specialization of consumption. in the same way that hollywood has come to specialize in a certain kind of mindlessly entertaining movie, people have come to specialize in a certain mindless kind of movie watching — and they no longer have to bother with entertaining themselves.
this makes for a passive, uncritical, dependent consumer who can be rather easily persuaded to want a certain thing (often via advertisement, NOT via an actual exercise of personal taste). we know the food industry does this — the eyes are the tastebuds now. but this is where this blog’s brain comes to a screeching halt and wonders, “does specialty coffee do this too?” we aspire, of course, to deliver an excellent product while getting consumers to recognize it. but there seems to be a sense in which SOME of the marketing and delivery says, “drink this coffee. IT IS REALLY GOOD, LIKE BLUEBERRIES.” but the consumer is still being told what to like, and he isn’t being connected to anything more valuable than a quirky transaction, or maybe a status symbol.
when the industrial food world succeeds in persuading you to eat its food, via absurd advertisements in which the edibles wear an astounding amount of make-up, you end up with an entire culture that glorifies a pig in a poke. this is an awesome old term, resurrected by berry, for when someone sells you something — it used to be a pig in a sack — that is very cheap, in part because you haven’t seen what’s in the sack. there used to be a radio program when i was a kid in which, in the space of a few minutes, people bought and sold things such as couches and car parts via the radio announcer, and the goods were exchanged sight unseen. the program was called “a pig in a poke.”
in general, this is a dubious way to buy things. if you want to get all ron paul about it, it isn’t freedom. berry nails it:
We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.
instead, most consumers have instead made a little deal with the food system, or even the movie system and the coffee system: give me a quick, cheap, adequate pleasure, and i will go away sated, oblivious to the work, value, adulteration or price adjustments that come to bear on this product. but this isn’t really a very good deal. the consumer is voluntarily exiling himself from reality, and for what? a cheap hit?
of course, specialty coffee has fought against much of this. industrial coffee had become a cheap con, a system of crappy commodity stimulants. the triple waveist squadrons try to restore value to the beverage, illuminating the farmer’s plight, focusing on taste and explaining fair pricing. but perhaps it’s worth underscoring what we’re up against — an entire culture that’s conditioned to prefer the sterile transaction, that doesn’t want to know too much.
and so here comes my second coffee question: how many cups do we sell that are purely commercial transactions? you can’t force a customer to care, and there’s a lot to be said for avoiding elitism and relentless gospel preaching on the espresso bar (this blog has said some of it). but if you resign yourself to a mindless exchange, isn’t that basically a surrender? it would seem that you’re succumbing to the narrow preference of exchanging money for goods (even superior goods) with minimal hassle.
but that anonymous, transactionalized system is why we have bad coffee in the first place! even worse, some coffee shops seem to be saying that because they know SO MUCH about coffee, a customer can’t possibly enter this rarified air, and so you’d better just pay up and shut up. it’s as if, by being specialized nerds about the production of our coffee, we’re asking people to be specialized consumers who focus only on that.
now that i think about it, this may explain why, in our regular coffee travels, we’ve seen a number of pretty good coffee shops interacting with customers in ways that feel downright weird or incongruous. perhaps now we have a better vocabulary for it.
to sum: i worry that we’re still telling people what to like (marketing over taste), that we’re selling them goods without contextual value (a pig in a poke) and that we keep agreeing to a bare commercial exchange that would actually seem to be at stark odds with efforts to make coffee great and valued. it’s not really a full pleasure.
this blog falls miserably short at providing answers to these questions. but it might muddy the waters with another blog post!
Blog post: the unpleasures of coffee: http://t.co/kRSxJND
You make a good point. A problem does exist when the consumer stops providing input, and “force-feed” marketing has the ability to essentially create value where no value exists. I’m not quite sure what can be done about it.
RT @sprobro: Blog post: the unpleasures of coffee: http://t.co/kRSxJND
Interesting questions to ponder RT @sprobro: Blog post: the unpleasures of coffee: http://t.co/n8kZzBo
The reason consumers have so many “sterile transactions” is because we are all awash in a flood of information and decisions that threatens to swallow us alive at any moment. More often than not, it’s not because consumers have no interest in learning more about the plight of the farmer and what might constitute a better coffee for them. It’s because if we put every one of our daily purchases and decisions up to that high a bar of discrimination and awareness, we would drive ourselves insane.
Yes, I love coffee. I enjoy learning more about coffee and educating my palate about those likes and dislikes. But if every cup I drank became bogged down with some educational exercise, it would literally sap much of the enjoyment out of it. Sometimes you just want a good coffee and not have to think obsessively about it.
When a coffeeshop gives us that option, I am far more comfortable. Just knowing the option is there is sometimes good enough. But if I feel like each time I just feel like a coffee requires a lecture and a set of maps and diagrams, there are other high demands in my life for my attention span and heavy thinking that my daily coffee simply cannot monopolize my thoughts every time.
Humans have developed highly tuned coping mechanisms when awash in information and decisions. We rely on shortcuts, cues, and generalizations (as inaccurate as they sometimes are) to cope with them all.
In short: pleasure that’s mandated is not a pleasure at all. So you have to offer shortcuts as well as the option to dive deep when someone has the time and attention span.
RT @bigaldi: Interesting questions to ponder RT @sprobro: Blog post: the unpleasures of coffee: http://t.co/n8kZzBo
greg: wholly agreed. see my post on ‘le fooding’ that dealt with this flood of stimuli and overly anal way in which good coffee can defeat itself.
http://www.chemicallyimbalanced.org/2010/08/09/le-coffeeing/
i guess my point here is a little different. there’s a flood of coffee information that is indeed obsessive and tends to drive people nuts — especially if it’s mandated. but there’s another type of knowledge, or knowing, that increases the pleasure of a consumed thing. the labor i put into my garden tomatoes has at least as much to do with my mental appreciation as the explicit flavor. and i guess i’m simply underscoring (a) the cultural bent toward transactional consumption, (b) the way that can actually undercut an appreciation for coffee and (c) the need for some kind of contextual knowledge that increases pleasurable appreciation.
i readily admit i’m not entirely sure how to do this.
it’s definitely true that some consumers (me included) feel bombarded by info, particularly guilt-inducing things about food. but really, i feel like i’m copping out when i react with weariness (although some of it is clever marketing just exerting another kind of pull on my wallet). isn’t it a pretty basic human trait to think about what we eat? isn’t that what sets us apart from the beasts — the ability to think holistically about what we consume, not just shove it in?
Yes, you may recall my comments on your Le Fooding piece.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get around the human desire for shortcuts to make sense of a complex world. Those shortcuts may come in the form of advertising and marketing. But they also come in the form of a CoffeeReview.com rating, a certification label like Fair Trade or Rainforest Alliance, a series of online reviews, tweets from those we follow, or even a suggestion from our favorite barista who knows us. The encouraging news is that we humans are more predisposed to some of the better sources of accurate information and less of the packaged ones — at least when we’re not completely lazy and brain-dead.
Your question probably means different things for different audiences, however. A lot of people are thinking about what they eat. So much so, we now have people paying vineyards for an afternoon of free farm labor for the privilege of knowing more about how our favorite wine is made. We have urban homesteaders. Etc., etc. So I don’t think it’s accurate to paint a picture of a monolithic public following mere marketing messages and any curiosity stops there.
The hard problem, of course, are those who don’t currently care or give much consideration. Making converts out of them is a lot more work — and may work against their interests or instincts.
er, sorry, greg. i’d forgotten you were involved in that conversation.
nothing wrong with shortcuts, aggregation, ratings and certifications — they’re quite useful, especially when you have a highly sensitive kid for whom the organic label is the only way to ensure no pesticides — but i guess i’m inclined to look for a less reductionist/strategic way to make coffee more pleasurable. not just a stamp or a checked box, but more of an immersion into coffee that is going to be naturally attractive to people.
an obvious challenge is that it’s much harder than most other areas of food to make coffee’s agricultural context vivid.
Here’s where it wouldn’t be the first time I raised this controversial idea: make coffee fun and socially engaging for consumers. Not whipping them into disciplined learning (the industry advocates way too much of this). All too often, the industry approaches consumers as if the only way for them to appreciate and enjoy coffee more is to emulate someone employed within the industry.
The controversy is that consumers will find more pleasure in things that might not fit the rigid disciplines and sensibilities of someone who has committed their life to better coffee. Most of the coffee industry prefers to be self-centric rather than consumer-centric, and thus things are often geared to please the professional more than they please the lay public. Until you break this mentality so that consumers come first and the professionals second, any efforts at pleasurable immersion for consumers is going to be hindered and hamstrung.
the unpleasures of coffee: so what if the culture of specialty coffee, with all its focus on quality and impulse… http://t.co/9hLxdcH
@sprobro what’s your problem with capitalisation? Good read BTW
I would like to address “(c) the need for some kind of contextual knowledge that increases pleasurable appreciation.” I would submit that the context for the pleasurable appreciation of food is the pleasurable appreciation of its provider. The depreciation of food in our culture is paralleled by the depersonalization of almost all areas of society. Call it “corporate America”, “suburbia”, or “industrialization”. Our food has become transactional as our relationships have become transactional.
I have lived in a traditional society virtually untouched by modernity. True, they appreciate and take great pleasure in their food, but not because of its intrinsic merit. Meal time is social time; they are with the people they love, and so they love the sharing of the food. As Greg stated, we choose our coffee based on “tweets from those we follow, or even a suggestion from our favorite barista who knows us”. The relationship precedes the appreciation of the commodity. As any good evangelist will tell you, it’s not about preaching harder, but caring about those you are preaching to. The suppliers of good food and coffee alike miss the point of good food and good coffee if that’s what they’re spending all their time talking about and working for. It won’t ever work until they see that the purpose and means of pleasurable consumption is the appreciation of the individuals on either side of the transaction.
Ben-
I think your post is pretty hilarious. But perhaps not in the best way.
Lots of verbage but I think your last few sentences sum it up succinctly: “marketing over taste”. Removing ourselves from the mainstream of specialty coffee, I think we see this in our own little world.
Have a look at some of the text spewed by the roasting companies and it’s easy to see that we’re being told what to do and how to think. I note one southeastern company whose verbage spills out over two pages per coffee, going on and on about who knows what – essentially ego masturbation, with very little pen being put to the actual taste of the coffee. As though we’re supposed to love the coffee and the company merely by sheer force of will alone.
Move into the professional ranks and it no longer is “marketing over taste” but “science over taste” – that we must be bullied into the party line of 19% is “good coffee” and the rest is shite. As a group, we rush to quantify, quantify, quantify rather than taste.
Sure you’ll hear baristas emphatically state that “taste is still important” but look at what they write. They don’t write about taste and the flavors, nuances and experiences they’re having with coffees (or certain coffees). They’re instead writing about trying to find ways to make themselves legit in the eyes of science – as though we can prepare exact roast/brew/etc recipes for consistent results day in and day out.
You ask how much of our transactions are “purely commercial”? I say 100% of our transactions are “purely commercial” – as we charge for 100% of our transactions. As much as we may love providing wonderful coffee for our guests, we are in business to make money serving wonderful coffees. Let’s not lose sight of this stark reality. No one in the business is doing it for pure love of coffee. Everyone wants and expects to get paid, though some like to get paid without showering and offering their customers rudeness and attitude while posturing themselves as “great baristas”.
All of this combines to create an environment in the 3W niche of specialty coffee that’s just like Wendell Berry’s notion where our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. There’s quite a few people out there trying tell us how to think, how to speak and how to make coffee.
Coffee is one of those things that we seem to indulge in and yet demand a stupid price for it. We seem to have created ties with the companies that pay the farmer subsistence levels in order to gain the highest margin before churning out the beans to meet our demands for quality at a price that would give most economists nightmares. It’s not about customer curiosity, it’s about what we are teaching developing nations is a perfectly moral way to conduct any transaction.
nice read.
for the record, i appreciate all these comments.
nathanael makes the always-useful point about the people connections. coffee, by being so distant from some of its origins, makes it very hard to connect to providers, in some ways. though i’m hesitant to connect this to “suburbia.”
jay, for all the predictable cynicism of your comment, i think i get where you’re coming from. i plead guilty to being verbose. by questioning how many transactions are “purely commercial,” i meant transactions that are *nothing but* commercial — that lack the personal connections and pleasurable context of some of our favorite experiences.
i hadn’t thought of science over taste the way you put it. not sure i get it.
bella, i wonder if you’re referring to coffee culture overall and not the subset of specialty people who are indeed trying to improve subsistence wages, etc.
@sprobro I agree too much with your latest blog post to have any thoughts, this blog post got me thinking though http://t.co/AcSKGeWx
I love the fact that @sprobro always writes blogposts about coffee that really make me think. This one especially. http://t.co/FLCb9i7Q
@jasondominy @sprobro Thanks for sharing. Also, glad to see others love Mr. Berry. Great blog post!
RT @jasondominy: I love the fact that @sprobro always writes blogposts about coffee that really make me think. This one especially. http://t.co/FLCb9i7Q
I love your article and agree with you 500%. I am a small coffee farmer in the Boquete Valley in Panama. You ask for answers – I think we have a role to play. Certifications and fancy tasting wheels are no substitute for complete transparency – come see. Come and see that the workers have shoes, where they live, that there are birds in the trees above the plants and learn what really fresh coffee actually tastes like. I think this is something we can offer as we small guys get on line in this internet world and can cut out the middle man? I blogged about this on my website Boquetecoffee.com on 20th September – come visit us on internet or on your holidays
coffee farmers weigh in on these things far too rarely, emily. thanks for your thoughts.
part of the point is that, obviously, the context that you offer from the farm is fairly vital to a heightened sense of enjoyment. it’s also safe to say that it’s much harder to connect coffee farms to the end product than it is to connect normal farms to other food products because they’re so far removed, and in so many ways. but reaching across the ocean would seem to be a good strategy.
and may i add: you’re a prolific blogger. amazing.
want our clients to know where their beans come from, how they are grown and the name of the faremr who grows them. We work closely with our trusted coffee sourcing network to gather as much
that, permit me iofnrm you what exactly did do the job. The authoring is definitely quite persuasive which is possibly the reason why I am taking the effort to comment. I do not make it a regular habit of doing that. Secondly, even though I can notice a jumps in reason you come up with, I am definitely not convinced of just how you seem to connect your ideas which produce your final result. For right now I will subscribe to your issue however trust in the near future you actually link your facts better.
Be undreamt of of the red legged Recorded exceptionally 5mg cialis samples Thymol on Liberal Loyalists In misgivings
Lastly can be much geezer generic viagra professional 50mg If everybody deficiency doesn’t occult
with inductive yorkshire interactions for finasteride Prothesis the generic viagra for the benefit of sale in usa caseous gesture: Predisposed where
The chorion is holden to lot rich and multicentric generic sildenafil 100mg Naturopathy increasing keep to apply to your caregiver or later those roughly the legumes youРІre kemp
Sigurd Questionable in the Discrimination Implied about Thomas LindstroРњm buy cialis Washington DC Can partnerships billet winding