Seeking - Attention Seeker
Date Posted:1 June 2018
Seeking - Attention Seeker, Apply Here
Last month there was a disturbance in the force.
Not a great force, or even a great disturbance, but none the less, it was a movement of sorts, even if it only lasted 15 minutes.
During a particular boring period in the Melbourne coffee scene (it's been mindlessly boring for ages), with no real news or excitement for weeks and weeks, inevitably agitators become desperate for attention.
So, what do most attention seekers do when they want something......they chuck a few rocks at the glass house.
Specialty coffee is dead.....apparently.
Oh dear, it's the dreaded cycle of destruction.
You see, the industry has spent the last 10 years building up the notion of "specialty" in a Star Wars like battle between the evil empire of mass produced commodity versus the micro-niche crafty stuff nefariously called "specialty".
Seems marketing the bejesus out of Specialty has ironically now become too mainstream these days, so it needs to be broken up and torn down because it's obvious, the only way forward is volatility and instability to keep the punters always guessing - so what's hot today ?, not yesterday, that's for sure.
Apparently, it seems, everyone roasting coffee in Australia is claiming specialty status without even a hint of effort. Surprise, surprise, the coffee industry being deceptive once again - please, surely not ROLF.
There is too much "puffery" in the coffee industry - don't you just love that word.....puffery.
For those than need an interpreter for the latest disruption descriptor, it means there are too many promises of "we source the best", "we select only the finest beans", etc. Every man and his dog is specialty and few, if any, can back it up according to those with the stones in their hands.
Ho hum........why are we are not surprised.
We called it out years ago when brands touting Specialty Coffee credentials were in fact buying crap commodity junk. What moved us to write about it so long ago was seeing evidence first hand in trucks delivering coffee to our warehouse - on board were other pallets with Brand ABC and Brand XYZ in big black texta marked all over the other pallets being delivered on the truck's run.
To indulge curiosity, I would often chat with the truck driver and discover it's always similar greens delivered to those brands and upon close inspection it's s stuff we would never touch, yet those brands were happy to take it.
They get away with it because some brands have "locked in customers", simples.
Any brand has full liberty to buy whatever they want and then market the hell out of it as something entirely different. Some call it value-add or manufacturing, we call it deception and it happens across all types of industries beside coffee. It's what they can get away with that governs the extent.
The only exceptions here are FAIRTRADE certified products, but this is barely 1% of the coffee market and not generally an area where the Specialty Coffee market tends to play.
Now the stone throwers are seeking new definitions and terms.
In other words, they are trying to develop a different code, just like the Pied Piper luring rats onto a different path. They seek to stand out from the crowd with some new point of difference, whether there is a legitimate point is the real question.
Apparently, new codes and terminology involve having a more realistic creed with farmers and the entire supply chain, but that in itself does not define and guarantee specialty because there are many other processes beyond the sourcing and farming that define quality.
Besides, that segment of the supply chain is best handled by experts - brokers and importers. Coffee roasters that pretend to visit origin regularly are just showing off with attention seeking selfies.
The harsh reality is that true, genuine, reliable roasters are required to be at their post almost 24x7...... chained to their machine constantly. Go away on a trip for a couple of weeks, got to be kidding me.....who's roasting the coffee, the Pied Piper or R2D2 ?.
Coffee enthusiasts are encouraged to ignore the smoke signals of danger from "puffery" and vote with your taste buds and the obvious value propositions offered by your coffee suppliers - they are all trying their best to deliver some magic in your cup.
Brokers and importers are also doing their absolute best to compete in a tough market - they are not exploiting farmers or being opportunistic, they are also not perpetrating poverty in 3rd world countries - it's a far more difficult and complex structure than what the puffery brigade claim.
Things are never as they seem.