I was in Sedona, AZ last week and the Sedona Film festival was screening the movie: "The Perfect Cappuccino."

I wasn't in Sedona for the festival and couldn't see the movie because of the schedule.
http://www.sedonafilmfestival.com/

This is how they described the movie:
"The Perfect Cappuccino
USA | 2008 | 90 min
Documentary Feature
Director: Amy Ferraris
Producer: Amy Ferraris
Writer: Amy Ferraris

In the country that managed to put a man on the moon, why is it so hard to find a decent cappuccino? In this feature-length personal essay, one American woman's lifelong obsession with finding the perfect cappuccino pushes her to confront her country's depressing, distressing ongoing love affair with national brands and corporate culture.
"

I am sorry I missed the screening. Has anyone seen it? What was it like?
The producer has a web site and a video trailer plus a blog.
http://www.cappuccinomovie.com/

The trailer seems like an attack on Starbucks with some glimpses of real cappuccinos.
The blog reads like one of us.

Amy is pretty neat. She lives in San Francisco and frequents Blue Bottle, Ritual, and the like. I really enjoyed the film. It has a strong anti-Starbucks bent, and one of the significant subplots to the documentary is indeed Starbucks' failed attempt to police its trademark of the term "DoubleShot" on the DoubleShot Coffee Shop in Tulsa, OK.

I think the film does a great job at mixing a discussion of beverage quality and tradition with a very real, substantive discussion of what real community is, and how Starbucks stores and many shops like them create the illusion of community, but no one actually gets to know other people there.

I think I'd recommend the DVD, if you haven't seen it already. I don't know that I have any interest in owning the film, but I think it's a film worth contributing $20 to. To me, the most interesting dimension to the film was her interviews with Italian coffee companies and Italian baristas.

Has anyone seen this movie about the coffee industry? It looked kinda interesting to me when I saw a clip of it here:




...merged with thread on same topic by moderator...

Thanks for merging with correct thread!

I just got back from a screening of the movie, which drew a meager crowd of a dozen people in the audience, including friends of the director. I just want to know Chris Tacy's excuse for not showing up.

Well, the director, Amy Feraris, was there for a Q&A afterwards, which was interesting. The movie was well put together and edited well. It had a nice flow, although ultimately it ironically fails to address the tough questions it poses in much the same way that it early on attacks Starbuck's for a similar ethic. Nevertheless, it does paint a vivid picture of the espresso cafe culture in Italy juxtaposed against that of the United States, and also relates the transformation of how espresso is viewed globally as a commodity. The film seeks to hide its failure to answer the questions it poses at its outset by re-focusing itself on a human interest story of a small coffee shop fighting a lawsuit against the conglomerate Starbuck's, a behemoth so large the company lawyers the narrator is able to speak with are not even aware of the lawsuit. The film closes neatly if somewhat unsatisfactorily as it began with a focus on the perfect cappuccino, pinning its hopes on a so-called "Third Wave" of small, independent American espresso cafes, seeking to purportedly deliver quality espresso in a way reminiscent of the Italian cafes presented at the film's outset. Yet, as Feraris herself admits, Starbuck's itself started out as exactly such a small cafe with good coffee and good intentions. It is instead the American conceptualization equating brand with quality and business expansion with success which is the fundamental and polemic issue.

It's a fun film and worth seeing. For home espresso enthusiasts, the scenes of the Italian Museum of antique espresso machines, the digression into the history of cappuccino, and the interviews with LaVazza and more make it worth the price of admission.

For $20, about the cost of two tickets to see it in a theater, you can go to her website and pick up a copy of the DVD, which will be available in a few weeks.

Recommended.

drdna wrote:...pinning its hopes on a so-called "Third Wave" of small, independent American espresso cafes, seeking to purportedly deliver quality espresso in a way reminiscent of the Italian cafes presented at the film's outset.

Not wishing to goo off-topic but I do feel obligated to respond to the comment above. Over the past five years or so I've been to a number of the American cafes you refer to. Gimme Coffee, Ritual, Blue Bottle, Cafe Grumpy, Intelligentsia, La Mill, 9th Street, Murky Coffee, Octane, Caffe Artigiano, Caffe Vivace, Stumptown Roasters, Victrola, JJ Bean and 9th Street are widely familiar names and there are others, less well known, that I also covered in my travels. I don't think "purportedly" is a particular fair way of describing the espresso they deliver - relative to that served in Italy. I spent ten days in Italy - February of this year - and of the several dozen places where I had espresso only 3 or 4 were as good as any of the cafes I mentioned above. That included time spent in Rome, Florence, Siena and Milan.

drdna wrote:Yet, as Feraris herself admits, Starbuck's itself started out as exactly such a small cafe with good coffee and good intentions. It is instead the American conceptualization equating brand with quality and business expansion with success which is the fundamental and polemic issue.

I'm confused; You criticized Ferraris' film for not offering a solution to the problem of of false sense of community and horrendous quality offered by Starbucks (or were you talking about different problems raised in the beginning? It's been awhile since I saw it). I would also say that if you think that Starbucks ever approached the level of quality, even in its infancy, that some of the big direct trade players are attaining now, that we may have a fundamental disconnect. Starbucks started out much more innocently than where they have come now, but to say they started out with the same level of commitment to quality that you'll find in so-called '3rd wave' cafés now is, IMO, rather ignorant.

But, even if that weren't the case, I am confused by the conclusion above. I agree that the brunt of the fault for Starbucks' success goes to the human 'conceptualization equating brand with quality and business expansion with success.' One thing that I enjoyed about Ferraris' film was how she showed the big Italian espresso companies selling out to Starbucks' idea of espresso. America doesn't have a copyright on brand loyalty, tastelessness, or even multinational corporation-ism; instead, humans are flawed, and we tend to succumb to the easiest, safest thing; we're also (many of us) greedy bastards. It's a problem, to be sure. And it's true that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. But I applaud the third wave for trying anyway. It's the closest thing to a solution anyone is likely to get.

shadowfax wrote:I agree that the brunt of the fault for Starbucks' success goes to . . .

Mind over matter: I swear I had to read this FIVE times before I read it correctly. The first four times I read it as I agree that the burnt of the fault for Starbucks' success goes to . . .

Nothing like a healthy discussion, huh?

I was simply critiquing the movie for its overall lack of cohesion and having not tied up the loose ends. Considering it was made over several years on and off on a modest budget, it is actually quite impressive.

I personally remain quite unimpressed with the so-called Third Wave. I see these small cafes more like baby Starbucks, and it's not so much that everything has gone wrong with Starbuck's than there is a fundamental issue with society that allows things to move in that direction if conditions are right. What I mean is that Starbuck's could just as easily be called Blue Bottle.

That's a much bigger question though, and I applaud Amy's film for raising it. I enjoyed the film quite a bit, and I encourage everyone to get a copy of the DVD if for no better reason than to further alienate your friends when they come over to visit "the coffee geek."


Adrian

drdna wrote:I personally remain quite unimpressed with the so-called Third Wave. I see these small cafes more like baby Starbucks, and it's not so much that everything has gone wrong with Starbuck's than there is a fundamental issue with society that allows things to move in that direction if conditions are right. What I mean is that Starbuck's could just as easily be called Blue Bottle.

Could you describe for me what you mean by this? I guess I can understand that, having never been to Blue Bottle, if you think coffee is 100% social. I've been to more than my fair share of 3rd wave shops where the coffee is excellent and the patronage seem to appreciate the fact that they can take up a 4 person table all by themselves, leeching free wireless and isolating themselves with their books and laptops. Starbucks is actually less afflicted by this, in my experience, because their wireless isn't free. In fact, that was one aspect of coffee houses that Amy's film brought up that I really can't say I connect with--Cafés that truly foster community. I usually chat with baristas/café owners when I go into shops and they aren't terribly busy, and I'd like to think that at least a few of them are my friends--so to speak. I've certainly gone to coffee shop parties with lots of conversation and fun--Latté art throwdowns, barista smackdowns, and the like. But, average 3rd wave café, random time during the day, probably just a bunch of people, mostly alone getting a coffee on break/on the way to work/etc. Just like Starbucks or any other bottom-of-the-barrel coffee shop.

On the other hand, if you're talking about coffee quality, then I am just bewildered. Sure I've been to 3rd Wave shops with poor barista QC, and experienced poor drinks, or just lackluster drinks. That doesn't begin to compare to Starbucks, where what they're selling really has little or no relation to the name that they call it. I don't think you can even get a 6 oz. drink in Starbucks anymore. Everything is stale, candied, and in a to go cup. That has about as much to do with real espresso as a wine cooler has to do with a good table wine. If you think that top-tier 3rd wave shops are on the level of Starbucks as far as drink quality, well, I am just confused.

... or are you talking about something else? Brand loyalty? Personally, I think it's great. I love Elektras, Mazzers, and Intelligentsia coffee. I like their logos. I think they're attractive, distinctive, and I associate them with the highest quality. But I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole, and if Intelligentsia started selling me crap coffee when I clicked the order button, I'd buy somewhere else. There's nothing inherently wrong with brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is the holy grail for a business. Your brand gets you recognized. Like how you recognize your wife, whom you are loyal to (one hopes)--You met her, you liked her, you loved her, and you promised to love her for the rest of your life. But even a carte blanche vow like that has its limits: when you come home to find her making love to your best friend from high school, well, you'd be a fool to just suck it up like nothing happened. Same with any brand you like--when a company takes its brand down the toilet, you find a new brand, right? Not true of a lot of people, sadly... Still doesn't make the 3rd wave "basically the same" as Starbucks, does it?

drdna wrote:I personally remain quite unimpressed with the so-called Third Wave. I see these small cafes more like baby Starbucks, and it's not so much that everything has gone wrong with Starbuck's than there is a fundamental issue with society that allows things to move in that direction if conditions are right. What I mean is that Starbucks could just as easily be called Blue Bottle.

shadowfax wrote:Could you describe for me what you mean by this? If you're talking about coffee quality, then I am just bewildered... If you think that top-tier 3rd wave shops are on the level of Starbucks as far as drink quality, well, I am just confused.

Really I was just saying "The Perfect Cappuccino" was a fun film and anyone who enjoys espresso, like the members of home-barista.com, will get a kick out of it.

But since you ask, I was born with taste buds, and I certainly don't think that the products they sell at Starbucks are similar to those sold at the "Third Wave" cafes.

But they might be in ten years.

In order to grow, expand their market share, and maintain their stock value, Starbucks has been compelled to re-invent itself as a company from cafe to large-scale coffee-based beverage manufacturer and distributor. What I am suggesting is that the changing way in which success is construed within the context of modern trans-global socioeconomic constructs in some sense compels or at the very least facilitates this sort of transformation. Because branding and marketing can by virtue of easy international communication, transportation and of course the internet reach so many potential consumers, it more readily allows the rapid growth and transformation of businesses that conform to this model. When these businesses become large enough to dominate a market, they exert pressure on smaller competitors to close or change to compete.

I suggest that "Third Wave" cafes have sprung up, NOT as any sort of rebellion against the Starbucks of the world, but simply because Starbucks has transformed its business model to the extent that a vacuum for smaller traditional cafes (similar to the original Starbucks) has again been created. However, there are clear signs that these smaller cafes are not truly in rebellion. Evidence enough the "Hammer and Sickle" branded merchandise available at San Francisco's Ritual Coffee Roasters, or that they have begun to distribute their coffee to other local cafes, as an example. The same fundamental business model is in action. It is merely as if we are seeing the embryonic Starbucks cafe, before the expansion. (That is what I mean by baby Starbucks).

If Starbucks did not exist, we would have created it from one of the many other small cafes that existed at the time.

The salient question is whether this is what we want from our 21st Century society, and - if it is not - what social changes we need to instill in order to avoid it.

drdna wrote:I suggest that "Third Wave" cafes have sprung up, NOT as any sort of rebellion against the Starbucks of the world, but simply because Starbucks has transformed its business model to the extent that a vacuum for smaller traditional cafes (similar to the original Starbucks) has again been created. However, there are clear signs that these smaller cafes are not truly in rebellion. Evidence enough the "Hammer and Sickle" branded merchandise available at San Francisco's Ritual Coffee Roasters, or that they have begun to distribute their coffee to other local cafes, as an example. The same fundamental business model is in action. It is merely as if we are seeing the embryonic Starbucks cafe, before the expansion. (That is what I mean by baby Starbucks).

Following this thought, and your indication that the third wave isn't really a wave of rebellion per se, what would the rebellion to a Starbucks look like in your eyes? Isn't the notion of "these guys lost the plot; I'm going to do what they did well, better, and not do what they did wrong" a form of rebellion? Or is it something else entirely?

I would venture to say that the true rebellion to *$ is the increasing number of people who are learning to make espresso in their own homes and, as a result, getting their palates educated as to what good espresso is capable of being.

But that's just me.

News from Ms. Ferraris via email -

The DVD will be released on June 30th, and the website will be changed by then - you'll be able to buy the DVD directly through the site - http://www.cappuccinomovie.com/?p=thefilm

And, sorta on topic, another good flick is Black Coffee - http://www.blackcoffeemovie.com/home.html

drdna wrote:I just got back from a screening of the movie, which drew a meager crowd of a dozen people in the audience, including friends of the director. I just want to know Chris Tacy's excuse for not showing up.

You mean this was just shown in SF, a fairly short drive away from me, and the director was there and I missed it????

I know! Where were you guys? I thought you had my back?

Well, now you just have to be satisfied with the DVD, I guess.

When the original Starbucks, which was focused on roasting and selling coffee, was bought out and taken over at the beginning of its subsequently meteoric rise, the focus of the business was changed and mass distribution with a standardized mass market fast food business approach was inherent in their strategy.

I don't go to cafes for the social aspects but it's nice when it's there. I go to have great coffee and/or espresso and that's exactly what I get. I cannot and never have gotten that from Starbucks. In my opinion it's a bit disingenuous to slam independent cafes for what you think they might be like ten years from now. I had espresso and coffee in the original Stumptown location the year after they opened - when it was still their only store. Fast forward to this past Labor Day weekend in Seattle. I went to one of their free daily public cuppings in Seattle, enjoyed stellar coffee and then followed it upstairs with an equally good macchiato and a straight espresso. If anything... they have raised the quality bar and improved their product. If you want to criticize their shtick I certainly won't quibble with that 'cause it doesn't impress me a whit. But they roast and serve great coffee and espresso and that DOES impress me.

I tried espresso at a few larger chain type places in Italy this year and it sucked almost as much as Starbucks - plus they had less appealing atmosphere as a place to hang out with your drink. As for the good espresso I had in some independent places.... comparing those to independent American cafes is apples to oranges - they have entirely different business models.

Phaelon56 wrote: In my opinion it's a bit disingenuous to slam independent cafes for what you think they might be like ten years from now.

I think that he's saying that Starbucks started out with some of the goals now espoused by the third wave shops, and it wouldn't take too much for some of those shops to fall into the same traps as Starbucks has. And if they follow the profit with little or no regard to the quality of the product, they probably will.
He's indicating that there is a potential, but the actions of the individual shops will dictate where they end up. Your suggesting that they can't end up like Starbucks because they haven't. That's probably a good sign that they won't, but no more an indication that they won't that his suggestion that they will. With Stumptown and Counter Culture expanding ever rapidly, there is always a chance that they will lose sight of their original creeds and succumb to the siren song (had to, couldn't resist) of ever-increasing profit margins, only to marginalize the end-product. I don't see it happening, myself, but the possibility remains.

I guess that's a fair comment in some sense, Chris, but I still see calling quality-committed shops with utter disdain for Starbucks and everything that they represent "baby Starbucks" as rather rude and alogical. It's really not fair to say that they have the potential to become just like Starbucks, simply because it's remotely possible. You have the potential to take the helm of Microsoft and become the world's next richest man. And the potential to snap and turn into Charles Manson. But people don't seriously consider characterizing you in this way, do they? I agree it's a disingenuous comment, particularly in the original context.

shadowfax wrote:You have the potential to take the helm of Microsoft and become the world's next richest man. And the potential to snap and turn into Charles Manson. But people don't seriously consider characterizing you in this way, do they?

I took it that he meant 'baby SB's' in the same way those folks were referred to as 'baby humans'. What they grow up to accomplish is yet to be seen. Sort like When Starbucks was young, you couldn't tell whether they were going to be the massive multi-national, uber-auto, convenience espresso operator, or just another great lil' roaster that served coffee.
These guys are in their infancy starting just as Starbucks did, and they could go either way, Manson or Microsoft.

If I misinterpreted it, then yes, I completely agree with your assessment.

Psyd wrote:Sort like When Starbucks was young, you couldn't tell whether they were going to be the massive multi-national, uber-auto, convenience espresso operator, or just another great lil' roaster that served coffee.

This is what's catching me. Nothing I've ever seen or read of Starbucks has ever struck me like Counter Culture, Intelligentsia, Cuvée, and others do. They were never committed to the principles that drive those companies. They never lost their principles because what they've done as a company isn't against their principles. For the third wave to become Starbucks (i.e. sacrifice freshness and quality for profit and mass scale) would be in essence for them to turn their backs on their core values, like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing. Maybe this is all my confusion, but that's the understanding of the Green Witch from which my comments come.