Starbucks Bold Tour - Drink Coffee, Get Free Wholebean
Starbucks has rolled out an innovative plan to get people in the habit of coming to the shop, and drinking their coffee. Coffee drinkers who purchase a brewed coffee every week and track their experience through a Coffee Journey Card will receive a free 1-pound of whole bean coffee. Not bad for those who drink it anyway and if word of the program spreads, this might just get a few new users into the store too. The program started yesterday and runs through May 3rd.
"We have a remarkable selection of high-quality bold coffees from around the globe and we wanted to provide an opportunity to showcase them," said Dub Hay, Starbucks senior vice president, Coffee. "Highlighting bold coffees also provides a backdrop for us to implement the Pour Over brewing method which helps ensure our brewed customers can quickly have a bold coffee of their choice after 12 p.m."
Starbucks is also debuting the "Pour Over" method of brewing, also known as cone brewing where they will brew a cup of fresh decaffeinated or other bold coffee that isn't already brewed just for you. This sonds pretty appealing and offers a fresh cup instead of settling for a blend you aren't really interested in. They will take hot water, and pour it over the fresh grounds, filtering it through a cone right into your cup. I think that this is a great way to enjoy coffee and never fails to make a good cup if you start with a great ground coffee. More at Starbucks.
Handpresso, the handheld Espresso machine, can get you an espresso just about anywhere you have hot water. Barry Sonnenfeld, director of such films as Men in Black, has a video posted where he shows off his espresso talents when he visits the Badlands of South Dakota and a few other famous sights around the country. Who knew Abe was such an espresso fan (watch the video)?
Saw this and had to pass it along. Was this the start of the craze? Could the espresso tipping point have been reached via the espresso cart craze in Seattle? While Starbucks, founded in 1971, contributed to the craze, it was much bigger than just one brand. This very well could have been the first espresso cart in the nation helping to contribute to the wild west of espresso in the early days out in Seattle.
Two of the three owners of the cart features in this Seattle Times posting, are also the co-owners of the revered La Marzocco espresso machine company.
Check out the Photo and then the story that prompted one of the Co-owners of La Marzocco to mail in the picture - at Seattle Times.
Interesting article in the Boston Globe today that is worth a read - the findings are debatable, but they should certainly provide a bit of insight that makes people either cringe or nod their heads.
The premise is to find cheap machines on Craigslist, try out a whole bunch of coffees and then report back on how to get a good espresso out of the machines. Net, the finding that canned coffee from Italy is at least as good as any local coffee shop freshly ground ignores the fact that taste is subjective. I don't buy it. Find a better coffee shop. While I love some of the espresso coffees from Italy, and even use Cafe Bustello in a stovetop Moka Pot for Cafe con Leche, I don't think that they compare well to a freshly ground, well blended and roasted local blend that delivers layer upon layer of flavor and texture.
Another sad miss is the omission of steam vs. pump espressos. The extraction of even a low end pump machine is a lot better than steam based extraction.
What I do like about the article is that the author investigates about a dozen lesser known Italian Espresso roasts, and dives into the subject to examine a great subject - espresso on the cheap!
As part of our efforts to get the word out on great coffee, I wanted to highlight one roaster from Topeka Kansas that should be on your list of places to consider buying from. Their selection is impressive, not just for the breadth, but also for its recognized quality. Not only have they assembled a collection of coffees that regularly score in the 90's for cupping ratings by Coffee Review, but also because they won Roast Magazine's Macro Roaster of the year award for 2009.
They have a single store, serving up coffee, espresso and espresso drinks, but also roast about 200,000 pounds of coffee a year for other cafes around the country. Their high quality starts by seeking out rare green coffees and micro lots of estate grown coffees from around the world.
Their signature espresso roast, La Bella Vita, came in at a 92 rating from Coffee Review, has been used at their shop for espresso for 13 years, and has won barista competitions in the past.
Starbucks started testing the $11,000 Clover machines a while back and then turned around and bought the company, banking on the Clover as a new way to extract wonderful taste from the coffee bean, and a few extra dollars from its patrons. The three test markets, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco have over a dozen stores in each market using the device and selling the coffee for about $2 a cup. This morning the Boston Globe reports that Starbucks is pulling the Clover from several of the Boston stores, and re-deploying them to other stores. As they do this, they must be learning which stores, what traffic levels and what demographics drive success.
If you haven't noticed, everything is turning up pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month this month, and you too can own the only Pink Jura Capresso Ena 5 Super Auto if you are the highest bidder this month. The auction is to raise money for breast cancer awareness charities, and will close at the end of the month. So, fire up your inner espresso and go bid; maybe you'll win. At this writing the price is a cheap 345 GBP, well under its list price of over 700 GBP.
The Jura ENA 5 is the slimmest super auto out there, and certainly can bring powerful super auto capabilities to a small footprint area. When I reviewed the Ena 5, I thought that on balance it was a very good machine given its slim size.
I had the chance to try out Pod Merchant's house blend pods and have to say that they are worth a try if you are looking for some pods on the cheap. The pods are sold for about $0.45 each while others are sold for upwards of $0.60 each; a pretty nice savings. I was able to try the 100% Arabica as well as the more classic "Blend" and both were true to their style with strong espresso flavor and a reasonably dark roast.
There is also a decaf. version available, as well as a "Stout" version which is seen in some other roasters where they tip the scale in favor of the Robusta making for a very strong, full bodied espresso that can really stand up when making a latte.
Starbucks is finally getting some steam behind their marketing campaign to sell in the Starbucks Via instant coffee product that launched early this year. The blend of microground whole bean coffee and instant coffee has been part of a grassroots campaign across the country this year to boost its awareness and stay away from the mainstream.
Starbucks has launches a pretty major national campaign to energize the product behind a taste test challenge to get its store patrons aware of the new away from home instant coffee. The ads are setting up a national taste test at local Starbucks to see if you can taste the difference between VIa and brewed coffee. The ad is clever enough to not make any claim of taste parity, but are instead saying that "We bet you can't taste the difference". I don't know what they will be brewing, but my hunch is that yes you will taste the difference. I was not at all impressed when I used Starbucks Via earlier this year, and the readers I heard from weren't either. Clever ad campaign, disappointing product.
Starbucks has launched an iPhone App that let's you pay with your iPhone; not really, it allows you to display a bar code that acts like a pre-loaded Starbucks card allowing you to pay quickly and easily. The application only works in a handful of stores on the west coast and is definitely an experiment. You are able to re-load the "card" right from your application through a credit card.
Starbucks released another application for the iPhone that allows you to do the more mundane things, like find a local Starbucks Store, learn the nutritional value of their standard drinks, and save your favorite drinks and information.
It's September, the kids are going back to school, the weather has started to cool, and the sweet Pumpkin Spice latte is available at your local Starbucks. Longtime favorite for the cooler weather, the flavored latte makes its debut as we start to march through the flavored latte parade - holiday flavors are right around the corner.
Starbucks New Store Formats - Ripping off Neighbors?
Starbucks is nothing if they are innovative, and here they go again. The purveyors off all things coffee are now re-launching a handful of stores in Seattle that will offer coffee, wine and beer along with entertainment. The store locations will shed the Starbucks name in favor of other names, including one who's name is simply their address: 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. The store is opening within the coming week, and will be one of at least three stores to make the change which is driven by the desire to mimic the coffee shop and cafe culture of yesteryear/ pre-homogenization of the coffee shop by none other than Starbucks.
The concerns however are coming out of neighbors and competitors of the coffee giant, as Starbucks seemed to have done their research and then reapplied what they saw; so far not so bad. The copying is not so obvious until you actually mimic what is next door, which smacks of rude rip-off. I guess all is fair in love and war......
Ouch - nothing like getting caught offering what seem to be a little bit out-of-bounds opinions on Amazon reveiws. It seems that a gentleman was shopping for a DeLonghi espresso machine and found some gushing reviews on the Amazon site by a reviewer T. Carpenter of Stillwater NJ; then he noticed that this person also reviewed twelve other Delonghi products, giving them equally gushing reviews.
The Wall St Journal reports that the reviewer (Tara Carpenter) is actually an employee of the DeLonghi firm and that they have since asked Amazon to remove the reviews. While she was listed on the corporate site as the communications Manager, she is no longer listed there. According to the WSJ, she is still employed there. At this writing, she is in LinkedIn as a Communication Manager at DeLonghi. Check out Russ Taylor's blog for more details and the original report.
In the end, the problem for Ms. Carpenter is that she used her own name, because I am pretty sure that you can hire people to write reviews for you, making the obvious link back to the firm a lot harder to connect.
It seems like DeLonghi is stepping up and working to cleanse the system of these reviews. I think DeLonghi had better talk to the folks at Target to get her reviews removed from their site also; I did a quick search and found two up there; see below.
Buyer beware - those reviews may not be the trustworthy reviews that you thought they might be.
McDonalds is serving up sample sized Free Mochas Mondays from 7AM - 7PM for the next several weeks. The sampling event should drive some interest in the newly launched McCafe concept. The samples should generate up to 10 million free samples across the Mondays stretching from July 13th to August 3rd.
Consumers can cool off with a complimentary 7 oz. Iced Mocha or indulge in a 8 oz. Hot Mocha each Monday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants from July 13 through August 3. "This is one of the largest sampling initiatives we've taken on as a company," said Neil Golden, chief marketing officer, McDonald's USA. "McCafe has already become an essential part of our customers' everyday routine, and now we are giving even more people an opportunity to enjoy a complimentary, fully-customizable McCafe Mocha morning, noon and night."
Starbucks Bold Tour - Drink Coffee, Get Free Wholebean
Continue reading: 
Mailing List
Subscribe - RSS
Site Navigation
