http://www.ncausa.org/files/public/KALE...speech.pdf

Is this the future or a dystopian nightmare?

I say the latter. Pre-packaged homogeneous foods and beverages indistinguishable from each other and quickly delivered to the customer consistently every time is a great fast-food dream, but not the dream I'm living.

I did find this description of instant coffee interesting in contrast with the promoted coffee extract process:

...the brew process involves the use of 370F water (steam). At this extreme temperature, 55% of the bean "melts" into a thick liquid slurry, which is eventually dehydrated into crystals or powders. The resulting taste is typical of harsh over-extraction, and the beverage is cloudy due to bean fiber (wood) in the brew.

A lot of people drink wine and other alcoholic beverages just for the buzz while a few drink for the taste experience. Same goes for coffee. So if that buzz can be achieved quicker, easier, and/or cheaper, it will please a lot of people. But with a strong following of people ready to wait a few minutes in line and for preparation and to pay premium prices for a truly hand crafted beverage, and with rising awareness and availability, I don't think our high quality specialty coffee will go to the dogs.

Ian_G wrote:Is this the future or a dystopian nightmare?

The article is mostly marketing. But it's making two points; one right, one not so right.

-- The right point is if extracts like the X-coffee or Douwe Egbert's replaces instant and pot-on-the-hot-plate-for-4-hours coffee; it will be an improvement.
-- The wrong point is that all coffee consumption is falling. Specialty coffee consumption, i.e. of good coffee competently prepared, is rising, not falling. The writer hems and haws about whether the extract will beat properly and fresh ground and brewed coffee; since this is marketing, it probably means it won't even be close. Finally, there is no mention of capsule and pod systems, which are equally idiot proof.

The fatal flaw in the reasoning is that it misrepresents the way food stuffs are distributed in the US. The picture it draws is from the 1950s to 1970s: that you can get hard to cook raw foods, or easy to cook ready foods that were prepped in a big factory far away and long ago.

But this dichotomy was never true in some parts of the world, and is getting less true here. Go to a market serving a middle class public in East Asia, and most of the packaged foods have been made that day at the store, and consist of cleaned and cut ingredients ready for the wok. The equivalent is happening at most supermarkets here too, since with each remodel, the deli sections gets larger. Getting fresh, competently prepared, ready to eat foods is becoming a commonplace in the US. So the whole "eliminate the soda jerk" part of the speech is anachronistic, lost in the 1950s to 1970s. Today's reality has changed.

Intrepid510 wrote:I don't see this replacing even places like Starbucks.

+1. The article seems focused on innovation at the Quick-mart mass-consumption level of retail, and makes a reasonable case excepting points made by prior posters; it's hardly going to become the norm across all levels of consumption. Although the language of the piece treats all coffee consumers as monolithic and their expectations as consistent, we clearly are neither monolithic nor do we maintain our expectations for our coffee across all possible consumer situations. It's likely that there will always be a place for this level of consumption (fast, cheap, buzz-inducing levels of caffeine and sugar sourced at any gas station) because we're all precious little snowflakes who will consume different things in different situations. When I'm on the road I lower my expectations and choke down just about any kind of coffee, especially when in someone's office at a contract meeting, and think ahead to getting home where I can spare 5 minutes for an extra water dance resulting in something much more appealing.

Same thing with beer: if I'm buying, I'll pick up Unibroue's elixirs without hesitation; when watching the Super Bowl at a friend's house, I'll gladly down the Lone Star tallboys.