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Starbucks intended competition = coopetition?
SLATE presents,
Don’t Fear Starbucks
Why the franchise actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses. (click)
It appears that having Starbucks move down the road from your coffee retailer may not be such a bad thing afterall.
I’ve been saying for a long time that Starbucks has done more good by “enlarging the pie” than they have harm by misleading customers with drink titles. For many people, Starbucks is their first experience with Specialty Coffee. Starbucks is common enough to not seem overly intimidating for the average consumer, but is socially elevated enough to give the impression of being something above average.
With their marketing success, and exponential growth rate, having a new store moving in near your retailer can be a scary thought. This article gives a brief insight as to why it may not be such a scary thing.
I do, however, feel that it is important to point out that the focus is on quality, and only quality.
Perhaps the Barista Guild of America is right. “Quality as the primary means of success.”
SLATE: Why Starbucks actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses by Taylor Clark
Now Hiring: Tangerines Smoothies and Coffee, Houston TX
I received an email this morning that said simply,
part-time barista position available. 7am-1pm. Beltway 8 & Richmond. (713)785-1553.
Included was a link to a website:
http://www.tangerines-smoothies.com
It appears to be just a smoothie place that just happens to serve coffee as well, and you would be right about that, but gather this. There is a REAL macchiato on the menu. (there is also a caramel macchiato, but it’s not often you see the real deal offered).
Tangerines Smoothies & Coffee
10440 Richmond Ave.
Houston, Texas 77042
(713)782-8818
click here for map.
Home Espresso Animation (taken from H-B)
I was surfing Home-Barista.com earlier today and came across this entertaining video.
I got a good chuckle out of it, so I thought I’d share with the Texas Coffee Community.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDxg43jW5s]
Big Bend Coffee Roasters - Marfa, TX
I received an email today from Jeanne Sinclair at Big Bend Coffee Roasters with some information about who they are and what they do. Jeanne says,
Big Bend Coffee Roasters is small, independent coffee roastery located in Marfa, Texas. We roast only the finest coffees that are both 100% ORGANIC and 100% FAIR TRADE certified and we roast to order. That means we only roast your coffee after we receive your order, and we ship within one business day of order placement.
We have built our business on offering exceptional quality at a reasonable price. For information, please contact us at your convenience: Monday - Friday, at (866)731-1811, or jeanne@bigbendcoffee.com. Let us know what we can do to earn your business, and come visit us in Marfa!
And all this time, I never knew. Has anyone tried any of their coffee?
Welcome, Cafe Gallo!
Grand Opening in San Antonio!
Cafe Gallo, in the Gallista Gallery
1913 S. Flores Street, San Antonio, TX
Google Map and Directions
Just a quick note here that tomorrow, Saturday 13 October, is the grand opening of a new espresso bar on San Antonio’s up and coming South Flores corridor.
Cafe Gallo, tucked inside one of the area’s avant galleries known as the Gallista Gallery, is headed by Jason Garcia, a former culinary boundary pusher with the luminous likes of La Reve and Biga on the Banks on his resume. The grand opening will coincide with a new South Flores area visual and performing arts event known as Second Saturday Smart Fair, with events for all ages such as visual art, live music, theater, film and video, poetry, workshops and food. The area is adjacent to the hip Southtown area of San Antonio and is a haven hole for chic and trendy artists and scenesters alike.
The staff at Cafe Gallo have been trained by Texas Coffee People’s very own Jason Haeger of Espresso Trainer.com and will feature a small lineup of espresso beverages, single-origin drip coffee created via manual pour-overs, and a focused menu of homemade Mexican pastries and sandwiches.
While Jason Garcia and his small crew are very excited to be opening, they are viewing this as a very first step in what promises to be an ever-evolving coffee and culinary experience that takes advantage of the blossoming South Flores loft and condo corridor on San Antonio’s southside.
Grand opening events at Cafe Gallo will kick off sometime around 1pm. The cafe and gallery is located at 1319 S. Flores Street.
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Texas Tea & Coffee in McGregor, TX
This is a long-overdue update on an email I received at the beginning of this month from Brian, the manager of Texas Tea & Coffee.
So many shops asking to be listed, and so few people responding here with their experiences. What’s with that!
Brian wrote:
Please check out our website for menu, photo of our shop, and entertainment on Friday and Saturday night. Very cool place to visit!
It looks like more of a restaurant than just a coffee shop/espresso bar, but from the looks of the menu, that element is quite present as well. With phrases like, “All drinks include a double shot”, and “Espresso: Traditional Northern Italian Style”, It looks like there’s hope for McGregor.
Ahead of Our Time?
Possibly?
I’d like to point out that Texas, while admittedly not a coffee and espresso powerhouse, does have its share of ahead-of-the-curve coffee folks.
I posted on my other coffee blog earlier about the similarities that one World Barista Champion’s coffee company has to my own company in terms of greens selection (two of their three beans in their espresso are currently in my current offerings). This blog’s other half, Jason Haeger, used that same coffee as his S.O. espresso for his run at the title of South Central Barista Champion. All of which occurred before Klaus and company began their run as a roasterie and consulting company.
No disrespect to the former World Barista Champion and his cohorts… none whatsoever. We just like to note that a few Texans seem to be hot on the same brain wavelength when it comes to selecting good greens. That’s a fun thought for us, though maybe not so much for the Danes. But.. why not revel in it, as an “indie scenester” revels in throwing away his CD’s of a band once it hits the big time, secure in the knowledge that he “knew them a long time ago before they made it big,” that he, “knew them when ____…”
If you haven’t checked out Klaus’s company site (and blog) then what are you waiting for? for Jason and me to tell you?
Congrats, Klaus, Peter, Casper and Linus on the launch of the Coffee Collective.
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TX-Coffee Partners
EspressoTrainer.com