I'll drink to that

Rather interesting story in the WSJ, on the coffee industry’s growing attention to the decaffeinated line. Apparently they’re trying to “perk up the $2 billion decaf business.”

Seattle—maybe all of Washington state—is definitely a caffeinated kind of place. There are hundreds of coffee shops, anywhere there are people. (In another post I mention Forks, WA, population 3195, with four espresso shacks visible from the main drag, driving through at the legal speed limit, or maybe a little over.) I really love the drive-through concept, but I’m sure I’m about the only person in the average business day who wants decaf.

My employer hires an espresso vendor for the opening hour of its new employee orientation sessions. When I went through the orientation, it was going along swiftly, with the barista lining up the various cups and rhythmically grinding and brewing the espressos, the hazelnut-vanilla cappuccinos, the double-shot lattes.

Then I asked for a decaf skinny latte, and everything slowed like the check-writers in those MasterCard (or maybe it’s Visa) commercials. She had to haul out a little (really little) stash of already-ground decaf and it completely broke her rhythm.

My officemate thinks nothing of drinking seven-shot lattes on his way in to work. On Monday he announced he was cutting out caffeine, and drank green tea throughout the day.

By Wednesday he had a Starbuck’s cup on his desk. He tried to pass it off as tea, but finally admitted he’d been desperate to hunt down a coffee shop on the way in to work.

(As an aside, I have to tell you about coffee in the UK. First of all, Brits are in love with instant powdered coffee; even the ones who’ve traveled to the Continent or the US don’t seem to find anything wrong with drinking it, or paying to drink it at restaurants. And decaf is pretty much an anomaly. In grocery stores, if the five-shelf space for coffee is three feet wide, one shelf only will be allocated to anything not instant. There will be a couple of packages of real beans, a few jars of decaffeinated instant and possibly two brands of decaf real coffee—but not beans.)

I love Illy—it’s best of the canned espresso coffees available generally (superior to Melitta or Lavazza), but trying to find their decaf version around this area is like trying to find tiramisu at a Weight Watchers meeting.

Anyhow, it’ll be interesting to see how these new strains of beans do in the marketplace. I’m betting that Seattle will not be a huge revenue generator, but I’ll certainly do my part.