> The rapidly expanding niche accounts for 15 to 20 percent of coffee consumed in the United States, according to the Specialty Coffee Association.
One in every five or six cups of coffee is Blue Bottle or "third-wave specialty" coffee? This simply can't be true considering the scale of Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts, let alone brewing at home and coffee consumed at diners and non-specialty restaurants.
I'm surprised the Times would cite the SCAA so uncritically.
Mike from craftcoffee.com here. I love 3rd wave style coffee but that statement from the article is very misleading. This is a common trick that 3rd wave proponents pull all the time. They conflate "3rd wave" and "specialty", as Oliver did here, and then pretend that "specialty coffee" metrics are referring to only 3rd wave coffee. In actual fact, 3rd wave != specialty coffee. In reality, 3rd wave coffee is just a tiny fraction of specialty coffee. Specialty coffee includes Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Peet's, and many others like that. All those companies sell "specialty grade" coffee, which is a technical term that more or less means the beans score above a certain level when evaluated for defects. So when people quote the size or growth of specialty coffee, that's the pool of companies they are actually talking about. And in fact, depending on the source it's often unclear if those numbers include things like frapuccinos. There's very little data on the niche because it's so small that it doesn't make the top 25 or 30 sources of revenue or consumption in industry reports, but 3rd wave coffee certainly accounts for less than 1% of coffee consumed in the US. Blue Bottle has 25 cafes, Starbucks has 24,000.[1] Starbucks is worth $80B today. In aggregate, Blue Bottle + Stumptown + Intelligentsia + [any other locals you can think of] are likely worth less than $1B. So yeah, 3rd wave coffee is delicious and fun, but unfortunately it simply does not account for that level of consumption.
If they measure "coffee consumed in the United States" by dollars than it could mean each cup of craft coffee counts for ~4x cups of McDonald's coffee.
This is very surprising, as last time I did research on this subject I remember seeing that Starbucks alone owned 40%+ of the "single cup" coffee market share. The runner up was the McDonalds/Duncan "lower end" group of coffee sales.
Specialty coffee was great for the margins, but the market-share was not even close to the numbers being reported in this article.
I agree with this. Think of the mid to low-tier restaurants and the coffee the serve.
Unless I'm in some big city, most of time I'm just getting whatever bulk coffee they happened to buy from some wholesaler. They arent serving me $18/lb coffee from some boutique farm in Nicaragua.
While many of us do recall soundbites of the former Chairman and CEO of Nestlé about water, it should probably be noted that he is no longer in either role and is not a member of their Board of Directors. The new CEO (Mark Schneider) was brought in as an 'outsider' and while he also remains under some activist investor pressure is making some effort to clean shop and modernize their business. I'm interested to see what comes of this, and particularly whether Blue Bottle can actually benefit from Nestlé's technical expertise in coffee, which so many of the 'third-wave brands' struggle with.
This is the first comment you've ever made and it's basically PR handwaving away Nestle's history of human rights atrocities. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a shill account.
Nestlé has been one company I've consciously put effort into "not" buying products from, due to their track record concerning their formula in Africa (and other similar issues). That said, they are a beast and I probably buy a lot of Nestlé products without even knowing it. I still buy Nestlé Holloween candy for kids during the holiday, and I definitely eat my fair share of Butterfingers and Kit Kat's.
That said, I'll most likely pass up Blue Bottle now even though their affogatos are amazing.
There is! But not within walking distance of my office, unfortunately (I'm in L.A.). Blue Bottle is just down the street, and Stumptown is just too far to realistically walk to on a short coffee break-type timetable.
So this news is a little disappointing, but I'm hopeful nothing at my local cafe will drastically change for at least the next several months. I am, however, curious to see what impact this will have on the bean and roast quality.
There's a great episode of the Startup podcast (which is generally quite good, particularly the early seasons) about one of the artisanal coffee producers that sells to Blue Bottle:
Are you saying that supply can't scale to demand? Because what you've described, a limited supply and increasing demand, is commonly solved by increasing supply. Unless we're at 100% coffee output for the Earth, which I don't think we currently are.
We aren't. Like with any other plant, there's a relatively hard limit on the availability of land suitable for arabica's growth (premium coffee is almost exclusively arabica), which will shift in one direction or the other as climate changes.
Today there is still difficulty in generating enough incentive to get farmers into arabica, but that changes with different practices, which Blue Bottle has historically practiced (direct trade and direct investment in farms, etc.). This model seems to be very sustainable for the time being.
On the buying end, the roasting end, distribution, etc., the challenges in scaling are similar or the same as scaling any other business as far as I can tell.
My intuition is that consumer demand for genuinely premium coffee would run out before the land or the farmers do, but I know the market far less well than I'm sure others here do.
I'm saying that supply of highest-quality coffee may be less elastic than demand.
Certainly we could grow more coffee, and that would likely increase net output of high quality coffee. However, if a company is buying the 'best 10%' of coffee and need to double their output, it is more likely that they buy 80th-90th percentile coffee than reinvest their profits into increase the quality that tranche of coffee to meet that of the top 10%. Even if a company chose to do this, the amount of time it takes to deploy capital in agriculture (~1yr+) is likely much less than the amount of time it takes to deploy capital in manufacturing (months), which effectively would cap growth rate.
An interesting argument I hadn't considered. I wonder, though, how genuinely impactful bean quality is for the end product. It's well understood that it's impactful to some degree, but do premium roasters need the top 10%, or is, say, the better half of arabica produced sufficient to yield effectively the same brewed product?
Said another way, is the slope of quality distribution that severe?
Good question, I'd also be interested in the answer.
I'd guess its a long-tailed distribution something like this (https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3b21f991d3f0446ce30b9b...) (quality on x axis, volume on y-axis) However, I know little about the complexities of coffee agricultural and manufacturing process, mostly just speaking in abstract armchair economics terms.
Sort of defeats the point of visiting your friendly neighborhood non corporate cafe. I was even willing to drink coffee that came out of a rodents butt to show my willingness to be non corporate & local. Forget that! It's Dunkin coffee for me from now on.
All the people in this thread arguing about the "right" of water should sign a waiver of liability, then abstain from water for a few days to show how it's not a right, but just "a nice thing someone should have."
As this thread will ultimately will end up discussing the corporate evil that Nestlé apparently is, I want to, for the sake of the discussion, point out the reasonableness of the CEOs statement regarding water as a human right:
He argues water should have a market value so that it is treated more like a resource that should be well managed. Of course a state can also do this and in my opinion should, but of course as a company they want to fill this role. If water is treated as a market asset then more investment will happen (which can also happen through a state entity) - a good thing. In a later video, after the 2005 video was a total PR disaster, he tries to clarify his argument by saying that water should be a human right to humans who need it for living, but not for gardening or washing a car. To me that seems like a valid case.
Where are his statements on their practices regarding infant formula, the use of child slavery for chocolate, the use of general slavery in their seafood production in Thailand, and the intimidation of workers who wish to unionize in India?
brm hits the nail on the head. Their infant formula practices alone are horrible enough to boycott their entire business. For anyone that isn't familiar, they convince people in developing nations to switch to free infant formula so they stop breastfeeding long enough that they stop lactating and must purchase expensive formula instead. The mothers often can't make the formula hygienically either due to poor quality water or other unsanitary conditions so it can lead to many problems.
"They're so poor, some of them can't even lactate enough to feed their babies, we should sell them cheap formula so they can compensate"
Then the cheap formula becomes itself problematic because they hadn't realized that water itself was dirty and their cheap formula wasn't as good as the expansive one.
Are they really stealing it? The US Forest service seems to think they have a valid permit:
Yet the firm's permit to operate this seven-mile pipeline in the mountains expired in 1988, though since it pays its yearly $524, the licence is still considered valid by the US Forest Service and by Nestle.... However, activists consider the permit expired and the US government is now reviewing Nestle's licence. A public comment period has just closed and this month a federal hearing will consider the legality of the permit.
Later that year a federal judge sided with the Forest Service and declared the permit legal:
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled in favor of the U.S. Forest Service, declaring valid Nestlé’s permit for water-bottling operations in the San Bernardino Mountains, on a motion filed by three environmental groups that sought to shut down the company’s efforts until its effects on the environment could be evaluated.
The original post said that they were "stealing" the water, which implies a violation of the law.
I was pointing that that they apparently had the legal right to the water.
Why can't local groups be given the tax benefits and other handouts to manage this? Are the people at Nestle THAT good at this? No one else can figure out the logistics?
What is the "this" you're referring to? Getting permits? Bottling water? Do you think "local groups" are less likely to be influenced by businesses and other special interests than federal agencies? Who would oversee all of these local groups to be sure they are operating fairly?
The whole notion that my community, a metro area of 3 million residents, multiple universities and tech companies, needs this redundancy
Again, you've lost me, what redundancy are you talking about?
But if Uncle Sam says so! Well who am I to question them!?
By all means, question the government, but why blame a company for operating under the conditions of the permit issued to them by the government agency that regulates the resource?
Your linked article does not support your assertions that they are "stealing" water.
By the way, the 36 million gallons mentioned in the article is about 110 acre feet, or the same amount of water used to irrigate a 25-50 acre almond orchard (depending on location). It's nothing, and it's being used as drinking water, not to wash cars, water lawns, fill swimming pools or any of the other more wasteful ways people use water.
The local impact is much greater though if the water is pumped out of the ground and then shipped out of state. All of your other examples end up back in the local water table. It's silly to argue that 30 million gallons of water being shipped out of range of the local reservoir is inconsequential -- especially in a state with constant droughts and rapidly depleting reservoirs.
(I've helped manage large aquaculture projects dealing with much larger quantities of water, so I'm not reacting to what seems like a big number. It's striking how differently the EPA treats the diversion of ground water vs. surface water)
Saying 36 million gallons of water "is nothing" is certainly a bold stance.
The federal government is charging Nestlé $524 for 36,000,000 gal of water. I just checked, and that same amount of water would cost me $303,689 from my local utility.
I entirely fail to see why Nestle should get a huge discount for water that is then sold to American citizens at $1.79 a gallon, for a 122,976% markup.
The price you're quoting from your utility likely includes water treatment, transport of the water to your home, transport of wastewater from your home, and wastewater treatment. I would be surprised if you're paying anything significant for the water itself.
It very well may be that Nestle (and many other companies) are under-paying for their water rights, but I don't think you're comparing apples to apples.
Have to agree. The greatest terminology blunder made in the modern world has been to talk about "water rates", "water charges" or even mentioning "water" in this regard. We should always be talking about Pipes.
> I entirely fail to see why Nestle should get a huge discount for water that is then sold to American citizens at $1.79 a gallon, for a 122,976% markup.
Well, when you phrase it that way it sounds terrible, but it's a completely bogus comparison. A retail water user is paying not just for the water but more importantly for it's storage and delivery to their doorstep. That increasers the price. You also are not buying in bulk. If you were, you would only be paying $50-200 an acre foot as most California farmers do to have water stored and delivered to their farms. Nestle is only paying for access to a water source. Is $524 too low a fee for a permit? Yeah, probably, but the company isn't "stealing" water, and compared to what farmers pay for similar amounts of water isn't not that that different.
That water would cost you $300K because your utility has to source it, store it for year-round availability, pipe it from remote mountain streams to your house, maintain all of that pipe, keep it clean, bill you, occasionally collect past-due balances from your neighbors, maitain a customer service center, employ unionized pipeline maintenance crews, buy the heavy equipment used by those crews, maintain that equipment, pay the unionized mechanics who maintain that heavy equipment, employ a security team to protect the safety of the system, etc., etc., etc. Running a public utility and running a bottling plant aren't the same sport.
And I don't get exactly what it means to declare water a human right. There are certainly people in the world not getting the clean water they need. But how do you solve this? You set up an international agency to acquire water for them. But where do you get the funding for this agency? If it really is a _human_ right, is this agency above local laws? What are the restrictions on this agency? Can this agency ban the building of a dam that would deprive even one person of a suitable source of water?
It's weird because other rights are what others _can't_ do to you, but this right is what others _must provide_ you. Who and how just aren't clear.
I don't get exactly what it means to declare water a human right
It's not particularly meaningful to say that water is a human right. Far better to talk about obligations. Who has the obligation to provide people with access to clean water? That is where the discussion can begin.
I would argue that whoever controls access to clean water should be the first to answer the question of obligations. If those who control water refuse to provide it to those in need, why should we allow them to control water?
I personally distinguish between 1)Human Rights, 2) rights as a member of a specific society, and 3) simply things that are "right" to do for peoples in the moral sense.
1. Something that can't be taken away by someone else.
2. A contract between an individual and the country/state with which they are a citizen. In return for paying taxes and following laws, they can expect services, utilities, military, education, etc.
3. These things are not something you're entitled to morally (like water, as there's no one to sue if you don't have water in your region), but societies should recognize the need for water, and thus it is moral and right to help ensure that all people have access.
If you do that you're using words differently than many other people, the UN included. By your definition the right to a fair trial isn't a human right (which isn't a particularly widely held opinion).
Using your definition, there's no such thing as human rights.
Life, liberty, and property are all things that are only guaranteed by societal standards and enforcement. Murder, theft, and enslavement is the norm where the rule of law and enshrinement of rights are absent.
Much of the US enslaved human beings for hundreds of years - liberty is clearly only something we get by being a member of a specific society.
Well my assumption is that liberty, life, and property are things that can be taken away.
edit: I may have misunderstood your comment. I mean that human rights are things that are violated by taking them away, not failing to give them to you. So while life can be taken from you, doing so would violate human rights. Whereas arguing that internet is a human right doesn't work with this model, because the current violation of that 'right' doesn't just result from someone taking something away, but from someone failing to give it to you.
You've got it backwards. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness are inherent in being human. Governments can only take them away, they do not confer them.
> Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness are inherent in being human.
<Citation needed>.
The conventional Enlightenment-era arguments for natural rights, like those which inspired the American Founding Fathers, claimed that those natural rights were endowed by a Creator. Unfortunately, over the following two centuries-plus, fewer and fewer people accept the existence of a Creator that can endow such rights. Meanwhile, the study of homo sapiens as a social animal has proceeded apace, and it is clear to many – if not most – people today that “rights” are a rather arbitrary thing that human beings in groups posit for utilitarian reasons, but they have no foundation beyond that.
I agree that they are inherent, but it's not just governments that take them away, it's other people in general.
You could live in a totally government-free society and somebody, somewhere will eventually come along and fuck your shit up. Then you are just fighting to keep your rights, which for many might be preferable than trusting a government to do it for you.
The question is are you more likely to retain those rights under a government than without one? If so, what kind of government?
Exactly. I often hear this whole "water a human right" argument from the left and when asked about what would change they really can't answer that. I think everyone knows how water is essential for the human life but declaring it a human right won't change anything. After all what would we do the next day after making it a human right?! Send the US Army to Malawi bearing Super Soakers?
Hopefully to avoid situations like Bolivia's where their water system was privatized (in a move that was mandated by the World Bank), and the private company increased water to $20/m for people who made on average $100/m. That company went so far as to send in paramilitaries to intimidate anyone who collected rainwater.
> Send the US Army to Malawi bearing Super Soakers?
When you put it like that it, of course, sounds silly but try to see it the other way around: Take all the money spent on wars, where lots of infrastructure (usually among the first targets) and environment ends up being destroyed, and imagine it's instead spent on infrastructure projects helping the actual civilian population.
Yes it's naive, yes it's very unlikely to ever happen, but I still like to think that the US Military acting as a demilitarized "global infrastructure building force" would have done far more good for humanity than constantly waging wars on barely defined things like "terrorism", leaving destroyed wastelands and lot's of disgruntled people in their wake.
We have to end this system based on profits and create other institutions based on rights and how to achieve those rights for everyone. Capitalism has failed!
It's really easy, you take your relatively enormous salary and donate $30 a month to help organisations build infrastructure they need. Imagine if everyone did this?
This is absolutely true in the general sense, but is negated by the rents being given to those who own water rights due to prior appropriation. In the absence of a payment for these water rights (analogous to the payment we pay for spectrum rights on radio frequencies), there is going to be a misallocation of water and waste.
He may seem reasonable, but in a lot of cases like this companies seem to take the line of "we're following the rules and complying with all government regulations, we will happily follow any rules limiting X and Y if the state chooses to create them.", but at the same time they have a huge influence over especially local and state governments, but also the federal government. Like a lot of companies, they probably take a hand at writing legislation that is favorable to them, and then try to get it introduced [1]. I'm not familiar with the site in [1], but I was looking for a quick guide to lobbying efforts and it certainly seems plausible but I haven't vetted the info for myself.
The reality is they make huge amounts of money selling something that people can get for next to nothing from their cities and towns and pay next to nothing for it, at the expense of the people living where the water is taken and where it is sold at insane margins. Yeah, it is on us for letting them do it, but like everything they hold a lot more cards than we do, so they are just one more huge powerful corporation that will have to be challenged by the people which will take another gargantuan effort of education and activism.
rather have underpriced water be available to people for gardening, washing cars, swimming pools than it be given away for free in corrupt government contracts to a mega-corporation so they can grow rice in the California desert or bottle ground water and sell it at inflated prices.
there's no Cushing, Oklahoma for water. most water delivery dams, pipelines, plants are owned by govt entities and are vertically integrated to serve a particular locale. Theres not often ways to switch delivery and commercialize it.
the closest analog is the Colorado river basin but the various state's government agencies sort that out themselves without the need for intermediary market markers.
> He argues water should have a market value so that it is treated more like a resource that should be well managed.
Sounds like a good case for cap-and-trade. That is, don't allow people to withdraw groundwater faster than it's being replenished, and don't allow people to withdraw enough surface water to harm fish populations. And then let folks trade their allocations.
We are precluded from bottling or otherwise selling our water by the PUD to anyone other than the homes for which our water serves.
The bullshit factr in this is that PUDs (public utility districts) have made deals with companies like Nestle to allow them to slurp up thousands of litres per penny from wells/springs/aquifers and then sell that water for thousands % more than they pay...
Yet they limit small water companies who own their full infra and prevent them from going after market value for their water.
So as a small family water company, fuck nestle. I find your argument BS from the front lines of regulations that favor mega-corps and fuck over small companies.
We have been trying to get our Tahoe water bottled for decades - but it takes big money. And our water comes from a natural spring, not from the lake - and should not be regulated the way it is.
Water can be treated as a market asset and companies will pump as much as they can depleting the supply for everyone else in the region (this is already the case some places).
In order for it to work out there needs to be a ton of regulations in that market, but once the market is set, they will just lobby it for decades until regulations are essentially gone.
People like the CEO say that it should have market value, because they are the ones that can only see value in markets. The rest of the world does not need to but a price tag in something to see value in it. Also, habitats all around include millions of plants and animals without a dime to spend, a water market will see no value in catering to them, we should just trust these companies with abysmal track record to ensure habitats are maintained?
Where does that article say they have fought attempts to charge for it?
What that article says is some environmental law experts claim it would likely be fought, and a statement by Nestle saying they are ready to discuss an amount if the state wants to. The fight it talks about is about a cap on the quantity of water, not on a price.
The article discusses a previous court case they fought that gives them the ammo to fight usage restrictions.
> Now, "Nestle can argue under the Michigan Court of Appeals decision in 2005 that its pumping is within the scope of its reasonable use, to the extent it isn't harming anybody," he said. "And it doesn't have to pay for it."
>water should be a human right to humans who need it for living, but not for gardening or washing a car
Isn't water already a managed resource? People pay for the water they use to garden or wash cars right? Sure it is the same amount irrespective of what you use the water for, but it is still not free right?
I always postulated that a cubic meter of water should be a constitutional right to every human for free. Every water company etc. should allow one cubic meter of water to every citizen for free. Everything above can be paid. This would give people in extreme conditions at least some way to ease their chances to survive. Why it sounds like a small amount, it would help less fortunate. People should not worry about basic income more than it should about the constitutional right to basic products first like water, education, food and the internet.
About 8.5 gallons per day or 32 liters. A few gallons per day in an emergency is plenty for drinking, cooking and hygiene so 4x that much is a good start.
That's a major bummer. Nestle is one of the most evil companies there is--their CEO once said water isn't a human right. Nestle uses cocoa from slave labor and bottle water in drought stricken communities and national forests on expired permits, and do shady stuff like hiring the regulator who gave them their water license. Very few companies are as vile and amoral as Nestle.
Unfortunately, this will taint Blue Bottle's 'premium' experience for me. I guess I'll go to Philz instead.
Saying water isn't a human right is different than saying not everyone should have access to water.
I generally agree that water isn't a right. I think it's a misuse of the word "right" and a misapplication of the concept of a "right".
Rights define what you're free to do for yourself, and the various ways in which those freedoms can't be infringed upon by others. For example, you have a right to free speech and people can't infringe on that. You have a right to not be tortured and people can't infringe on that. In the US, if the government is going to take your property or jail you as punishment for a crime, you have a right to a fair trial first before they can do that to you.
There's a distinction between that and things like water and healthcare. One is a list of rights, and the other is a list of things people generally need to live a happy and healthy life. If we're going to dilute the definition of "right" down to that degree, why don't we just throw in housing and free trips for vacation and a loving partner while we're at it?
South Africa has housing as a right in their constitution. They also have 200,000 homeless people. So who's infringing on their rights? Every citizen of South Africa?
The UN General Assembly declared water a human right. The world also has close to a billion people who don't have access to clean drinking water. Who's infringing on their rights? Are you?
Rights aren't about what resources (time, money, commodities, services, etc) you're free to take from others. When you start defining rights that way, rights all start contradicting each other. What about a doctor's freedom to choose who they perform surgery on? What about your freedom to live a life not solely dedicated to plumbing in Gabon?
I think the key point of contention is about rainwater harvesting.
Making rainwater harvesting illegal (and thus forcing people to overpay a monopolized water system) is arguably a violation of human rights. It is a prohibition of what you are 'free to do for yourself', that forces people to pay for something they need to survive (and could otherwise get for free).
However, I agree on the haziness around the issue. Mandating that everyone receives X amount of drinkable water may be expensive to implement, economically unsustainable and create perverse incentives.
In the US people have mineral rights to the earth under the surface of their property. This can be separated from the surface rights and sold off. If one buys just the surface rights, then the entity that has the mineral rights can, in most cases, access your surface to extract their minerals. Not reading the fine print on your title and having someone want to exercise their mineral rights is a serious issue in the US. I would definitely be very wary of buying land without the mineral rights.
But the right to use water that lands on your property? Never heard of "rain water rights". Unless it was previously declared somehow, forcing you not to collect rainwater would highlight the need for the right to bear arms. I would like to know more about how that came about in those cases.
This is similar to Thomas Paine's argument for a basic income in Agarian Justice. If civilization has deprived you the natural right to live off the land, it should compensate you somehow (access to cheap clean water or free water).
You're explicitly making a semantic argument. When people say "water is a human right" or "Internet is a human right," all they mean is that governments should use public funds to improve (or guarantee) access to those things.
Of course you're correct about the way the word "right" is generally used in philosophy and ethics. But that's absolutely not the definition being used here.
It's exactly a matter of semantics. Condemning people for saying water isn't a human right is also a matter of semantics.
The Nestle CEO was using the correct definition of "human right". Now people are going to attribute their inaccurate definition of the term to his statements, and condemn him for it (like the parent comment did).
It's all semantics.
Now how about we start using the word correctly so we can avoid this? Or how about the liberals condemning him try being intellectually honest for once, and stop deliberately and knowingly misinterpreting what he said just because it's convenient for the argument they're trying to make?
There is enough to disagree with Nestle about without even going into Water Rights.
What they do to women with their formula in developing nations is a crime. They miseducate them by telling them that Formula is better, give them free samples until their milk dries up, and then start charging them.
It's deplorable behavior, and as a result I refuse to buy any Nestle product.
I think that even by your definition water is a human right. Should we not have access to plumbing anymore lets say, and there was a freshwater lake near where we lived, we should be allowed to get our water from it and no other human should stop us from doing so simply because they said that they owned it.
You're arguing that if there's an available source of water, people should be able to take from it as they choose. But then what incentivizes me to build a plumbing system (which, if I should build, I would claim that I owned) if anyone could just take from it?
I think the water quote is unfair, that's not exactly what he said. If you watch the interview of him on his desk, which is what I think you're referencing, he says there should be a difference between what a person needs and what you should be able to treat as a commodity. Obviously Nestle would love to sell the water out from under you, but to say that he doesn't think people deserve _any_ water as a right is disingenuous.
His specific number could be argued - I don't remember what it was, but I think it was in the liters per day. Regardless, I think it's interesting to think about the idea that the commoditization of something begins after a certain amount, unlike chocolate for example.
That being said, I wouldn't trust the current political climate to be able to come up with a reasonable number here
I don't know how you think Philz is any different. They're a chain with the same desired path to global domination in the coffee space as any other business. And their coffee is awful.
Yeah, that was pretty awful. They pushed formula as being more healthy, which it isn't, and it was made extra bad because they did so in countries that didn't have clean water. Adults in those countries have built up somewhat of an immunity to the diseases in the water, but infants don't have that (they get it from their mother's milk!)
So parents mixed the water with the formula, giving their infants diseases they didn't have any protection against because they didn't get any antibodies from their mother's milk
Why? Blue Bottle customers are hipsters who like to pay extra for faux fancy goods. Why would they be especially likely to disacommodate themselves to benefit faraway people?
You can do much better the Philz, depending on where you are at there are lots of good options. In you're in the bay area look up Four Barrel, they roast great beans and their SF coffee shop is really nice.
Everyone is welcome to a preference of course, but I wonder why you assert Four Barrel is "much better" than Philz. If we're talking about non-espresso drinks, I know many people who prefer Philz. They have a huge variety of custom roasts and make remarkable ice coffee with cream. I like Four Barrel too, just surprised to see Philz dismissed out of hand. Most people who come to visit me in San Francisco end up going home with a bag of Philz' beans after trying a bunch of the third wave shops.
I miss Four Barrell since moving out of SF. I don't really understand why they don't seem to be doing as well as Blue Bottle or Stumptown or even Ritual.
There are a few coffeeshops in LA that brew four barrel coffee, I think it's a result of how Four Barrel mostly just sells beans instead of opening their own shops everywhere.
Additionally, Stumptown as well as Intellegencia are both owned by the same private equity firm that owns Peet's, Blue Bottle also got a ton of outside investment to allow them to grow as rapidly as they did, in addition to having a successful business of delivering their cold brew to peoples homes.
The thing about the food industry is that it has really high startup costs that take a very long time to pay off, so opening up a new store using the profits from existing stores isn't really all that easy to do without having a hundreds of stores already.
I'm serious considering leaving my current job because the office coffee moved from Sightglass to some over-roasted junk from somewhere in Marin county...
Well, and how many are conscious of the fact Nestle owns Nespresso? You're basically drinking mediocre folgers in a pod and paying the premium. No amount of branding will divert from the fact that local, organic alternatives can be had for less.
One in every five or six cups of coffee is Blue Bottle or "third-wave specialty" coffee? This simply can't be true considering the scale of Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts, let alone brewing at home and coffee consumed at diners and non-specialty restaurants.
I'm surprised the Times would cite the SCAA so uncritically.