(Ha Ha. Get it?)
{...}What matters is the quality of coffee. I donā€™t like Caribou Coffee very much; it has a burnt and oily quality that reminds me of . . . well, Starbucks. But at least Caribou isnā€™t trying to sell me a Lifestyle, and Starbucks always tries to flatter me with CDs and bookstore tie-ins and pretentious backstories for the various blends. {...}
Oh, please. He's getting it all wrong.
First off, Caribou is trying to sell you a lifestyle.
I know. I used to sell the lifestyle. Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but
they do have CD's for sale. They've also got neato travel mugs, too.
And little stuffed Caribous. They've even got a drink called The Campfire Mocha
which, as Mr. H. made me taste the other day, is a combination of
chocoate, coffee and marshmallow flavoring, designed to make you
remember the smores you concocted over the campfire when you were a wee
cub scout. The one organic blend they have is Rainforest---which I will
fully admit is garbage---but the minute you mention "organic" people
are all over it like white on an albino. They're trying to sell you the
Caribou lifestyle, which is something like "stop by the Bou on
your way up to the North Woods! We won't care if you're decked out in a
thousand dollars worth of Patagonia fleece and look absolutely
ridiculous, we don't care!" Second, of course, there are also
pretentious backstories for the coffee. You just won't get the story
unless you sidle up to the counter to buy a pound of beans, or the
employee behind the counter has time to blow. The La Minita Peaberry, for example, is a special kind of coffee, or so I told my customers. It's
exclusive to Caribou. A peaberry is a rare coffee bean, only one out of
every twenty beans that are picked are peaberries: they look like a
little football and have a denser flavor to them. La Minita is our
plantation in Costa Rica, and we purchase all of the peaberry. No one
else has it, and we only have it for a limited time. Oh, well, it is
expensive, but I can tell you because it's what I keep on hand at
home---when I'm able to get it---that you won't run through it as
quickly as you would a normal coffee bean. Because of its denseness you
get more ground coffee from one peaberry than you'll get from ... I
think you get the picture: part bargain (which, to this day, I will
stand by because it's true), part yuppy buying incentive because of the
exclusiveness, and part romantic ideal that this is coming to them
straight from the mountains of Costa Rica. He misses all that, but then
when it's time to get down to brass tacks, he says the coffee "{...}it
has a burnt and oily quality that reminds me of . . . well, Starbucks."
Oh, my. Where to start?
1. While Caribou is more than pretentious in many aspects, what they
are not pretentious about is how they care for their beans. They do
care. While it sounds pretentious in itself, Carbiou tailors the roast
of the beans to the natural flavor of the varietals (i.e. Costa Rica,
Kenya, Ethiopia) and blends (Daybreak, French Roast, Espresso). In
other words, since Kenya has a lot of flavor naturally, you wouldn't
want to lose that flavor by burning
it. Conversely, the beans that comprised the French Roast blend were
ones that were best served by being roasted in the flames of hell for a
long period of time. I explained this to, literally, thousands of
customers over the three years I worked for Caribou, and you wouldn't
believe how many of them simply refused to believe that Caribou's Kenya
is what Kenya should taste like. The story would go something like
this: I had a great Kenyan AA at (insert some random store name
here)in (insert random city name here) and it was the best thing I ever
had. That's what Kenya should taste like. It tasted nothing like your version.
Taste is a peculiar thing; when you're commodotizing something that's
already been commodotized a thousand times over, by a thousand
different people, you're never going to win.
I have no idea what kind of coffee Lileks has set in his mind as the
coffee standard, but Caribou's coffees, unless you're specifically
drinking the dark roasts, aren't going to taste burnt. They just don't.
2. I never thought Lileks would fall prey to an urban myth, but he has.
Contrary to what Melita tells you when it sells its filters---ahem---there is supposed to be oil in the coffee when it is brewed because that's where the flavor comes from. Like, duh.
There should be an oily residue on your tongue when you take a sip
because, again, that's where the flavor comes from. This is a texture
issue not one of taste. There's a difference. A cup of brewed coffee
without oil on the top is sludge. I can't tell you how many people I've
had to disabuse of this stupid myth over years of selling coffee. If
you want coffee without oil swirling around the top, well, start
drinking Folgers brewed through a filter thicker than your average
dishcloth. 3. When I worked for the Bou, the worst thing anyone could
ever say to us was that our coffee tasted like Starbucks. Not only did
we have to deal with people coming in and ordering a "Vente
Frappacino," we were being held to the standards of a chain that
honestly couldn't have given a rat's ass about its coffee. It was an
uphill slog and it still is for the people who work at Caribou. I still
won't spend money at Starbucks. I refuse to. There was a reason why we
gave them the nickname "Charbucks." They roast the hell out of their
beans, (because, cough, cough, they buy cheapo wholesale beans!) and
all that fabulous flavor that's naturally imbued into the bean is lost
because they're tailoring their product toward a customer who sincerely
believes that the darker the roast, the higher the caffeine content.
(Another myth: the lighter roasts on Caribou's scale,
like Kenya have a higher caffeine content.) I would recommend that
Lileks try the lighter roasts, like Daybreak or even the LaMinita if
the store has it brewed that day. That's what coffee is
supposed to taste like. Honestly, some days it was like being a
sommelier at a five star restaurant and having to convince people that
no, Night Train is not what wine is supposed to taste like.
I totally realize this throws me completely into the geek department, but I don't go off and critique Star Trek
episodes, do I? Nope. I don't. I don't touch them with a ten foot
cattle prod. Mainly because you couldn't pay me to, but also because I
don't know anything about it. I do, however, know a lot about Caribou
and I honestly believed in the product when I was selling it for a
living, and I still believe in it because that's where all my coffee
comes from when we can afford it. They put out a good product. If
you're looking for me to slag off on them, well bring up their
management compensation/promotion plan and I'll go to town!