Some good points are made above, but I agree with Nick that stale coffee doesn't do the roaster any favors. There are other ways of getting your brand "out there" that don't involve submitting the beans to this sort of torture!

I'm surprised by, here in Toronto, 49th Parallel roasters ship their coffee the slowest way possible from the west coast. The shops get them in 7 days post roast and that's if they get them in time to put them out on the day they get them. I know of another shop that receives their Metropolis Redline 10 days AT LEAST post roast and then have them sitting there for a couple of months because anyone that actually cares that they carry Redline, doesn't care for THAT.

ALMOST invariably some barista starts to blabber on about how 'in the shop they pull it 3 weeks post roast, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. Ya, well... come talk to me when you have a prosumer machine, and a commercial grinder in your home where you count the time it takes you to pull a bag of beans in days as opposed to minutes.

I only know of 2 locations, one gets Stumptown and I try not to buy beans sitting in paper bags - I'm not a fan of that practice, that receive beans within a reasonable time to sell to people who care for freshness at home. 3-4 days post roast is perfect.

I suspect a commercial reality check is in order. If a large deparment store chain (with initials maybe W-S) rocks up to a relatively small specialty roaster and says "we'd like 10 tons of your coffee in 12oz bags for our winter rollout, and 2 tons a month thereafter" do you think the roaster is going to knock them back? Most likely they'll ring their spouse and say "Honey, contact the bank and tell them if they can hold off on foreclosing until next month we'll pay out the mortgage in full. Oh, and the kids can get new shoes."

They might worry about in-store freshness after they've cleared their debts, but since they have absolutely no control over it, they'll worry more about losing the contract if they make an issue of it. The only practical way to ensure you're getting fresh beans is to buy direct from the roaster, or roast them yourself.

Alan

Intrepid510 wrote: I am confused why roasters would allow their coffee to be sold this way when clearly on their web sites they state the importance of fresh coffee.

I think this has less to do with the roasters and more with inventory management at the point of sale. The roasters are selling their coffee when its fresh, and I'm sure that the roasters do try to educate the customer. However, the customer is a purchasing manager who doesn't want to have to place the same order every week and who wants to leverage volume pricing discounts. They are the ones ordering more product than their venues can clear off the shelf w/in a reasonable period of time. Part of this tendency is probably due to optimistic sales projections, but they probably don't track these small dollar orders very closely. "What did we order last time? Okay, let's do it again."

The people on this forum care about the stamped roast date, but that's a small subset of a much larger pool of consumers. Most people at these specialty stores are just shopping for coffee by brand, if that. And anyone shopping for freshness has to shop elsewhere. Sort of a self-perpetuating cycle.

Alan, do you think this sort of compromise re: freshness is inevitable as a coffee-related business scales up?

I'd like to know how much coffee W-S actually sells. The fancy bags might be there more for decorative purposes than anything.

Alan, do you think this sort of compromise re: freshness is inevitable as a coffee-related business scales up?

Yes. it was extensively discussed on alt.coffee 10 years ago. As Barry Jarrett (I think) put it, major chain outlets will never be able to sell fresh coffee except and until it's sold out of the freezer section.

Alan

I've seen even the vaunted coffee shops/roasters selling beans that most of us would consider past their prime (closing in on a month).

The thing is, the people who actually want fresh beans aren't going to buy old beans and the people who do buy them aren't concerned with getting fresh beans, so everything works out, sort of.

Alan Frew wrote:Yes. it was extensively discussed on alt.coffee 10 years ago. As Barry Jarrett (I think) put it, major chain outlets will never be able to sell fresh coffee except and until it's sold out of the freezer section.

Alan

I think that is just a cop out though, there are many items within grocery stores that require it to be fresh, coffee is just not one of those items that is determined to be needed fresh.

It also depends what we are calling fresh, because to me "fresh" is anything under a month old. Would I buy it? Probably not. However, I think with proper packaging that coffee can be acceptable for that length of time and stores like Whole Foods already accomplish this.

However, what I don't consider fresh is coffee sitting on the shelf/storage since December and then being sold as a store like Williams and Sonoma and Amazon.com. I find it rather amusing that roasters that preach fresh coffee would sell to places they know are not going to sell their coffee fresh, even at the extremes of the term freshness.

To not put your product in a place where it can shine I think is stupid, and doesn't set it up for expansion. Why would anyone want to go through the work of whole bean coffee if it is just going to taste the same or worse than the nespresso coffee?

On your point about a small roaster needing to get by I am talking about roasters here that have been around for 10+ years now in most cases that I see being sold at places like Williams and Sonoma extremely old. I know you were probably just trying to make a point by exaggerating, but I would hope that most of the roasters I have seen there have enough money in the bank or are doing fine enough to where they can protect their coffee and are not in that desperate need of money. If they are at a risk of going under then by all means go ahead, I just don't like contradictions nor do I think it helps them in the long run.

I accidentally read the roast date on some Black Cat from the grocery store as a week old. Smelled great when I opened the bag. Grounds smelled great.... couldn't for the life of me get a shot that wasn't a gusher, delicious, but still a gusher. More experienced guy from a room away hollered "that sounds like stale coffee". Oh... two months and a week old. Oops.

Raises the question, what exactly does "stale" mean with regards to age? Rancid doesn't happen to light roasts. Fully degassed, light roasted coffee still brews well months post roast..maybe a little flat, but nothing near as bad as some nasty second crack crap.

Order direct if you want fresh.

Many supermarket items, including bread and other perishable goods, are mainly stocked and restocked by the producers' own delivery people. The grocer essentially rents them the shelf space (sometimes actually charging for the space) to sell their goods. Stale goods are sold through alternative off-price channels or donated to the poor or sometimes (regrettably) dumped.

All that service and unsold product costs money and is built into the retail price. High-end coffee could theoretically be sold the same way, but the current marketplace would not support the required pricing.

Some high-end coffee roasters have tried supermarket sales in some regions and then withdrawn, rather than damage their brands with stale goods.