God in A Cup of Coffee

Don’t think the specialty coffee industry isn’t affected by the current crisis in global credit markets. At the producer and the consumer end of the specialty coffee chain, free flowing credit is the lifeblood of the industry.

Many observers of the specialty industry have come to understand how important credit is to coffee farmers –to all farmers.

Less well known is the dependence of small roasters on credit.  Like farmers, roasters can’t survive without borrowed money.  Late this summer and into the fall, credit has been very difficult to come by and roasters have been scrambling to find scrupulous agents who will underwrite their businesses. Without credit, boutique coffee roasters face catastrophe. Their cash flow simply is not sufficient to keep coffee beans  moving from origin.

 When a buyer for a boutique  roasting company here in the United States purchases a container of coffee (40,000 pounds) from a licensed exporting agent in  Guatemala or Kenya or another producing nation, it’s not the roaster who puts up the, say, 150K to pay  for the coffee.

Roasters rely on  overseas agents or bankers to supply the cash to buy the green coffee: principle, plus interest is repaid by the roaster when the roasted beans are sold. Sometimes  roasters American-based importers acts as their bankers.

Nor do roasters  use their own funds to  transport coffee from the farm to the mill, from the mill to the seaport, from the seaport (by container ship) to the American port, from the American port to the warehouse, from the warehouse to the roastery and from the roastery to the end user.

 Agents, importers or bankers pick up these costs, too.  Interest rates, of course, vary, depending on the availability or lack their of, of credit in overseas and domestic credit markets.  When credit dries up, interest rates rise, putting pressure on small businesses.  In the worst case scenario, credit disappears from the market, making the buying and selling  impossible.  Small businesses, with relatively few cash reserves, cannot function when this happens.  Some are likely to die.

So the $700 billion  rescue plan under consideration in Washington this week does not just speak to Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. This bill also speaks to the fate of some of our favorite boutique coffee roasters.

…..I have been trying to track down information about the upgrading of the coffee at the  famed Cafe Flore in  on Boulevard St. Germain in Paris.  I understand Cafe Flore is now serving specialty coffee.  I  wonder if this is true, and if it is, I wonder what coffee is being served and how it is being prepared.

Introducing specialty coffee to the French is one of those mythical goals –like the retrieval of Excalibur–shared by many in the specialty business.  Innovative specialty roaster George Howell of Terroir in Acton, Massachusetts  (one of the founders of the Cup of Excellence competitions whose former roast works, Coffee Connection, introduced high quality specialty to Boston, Cambridge and much of the East Coast) told me last year that owning a roast works and cafe in Paris is one of his dreams.

I am wondering, too, if former world barista champion and nouveau coffee roaster James Hoffmann (I had hoped to visit his newly established Square Mile coffee roastery in London when I was in Europe, but the dates didn’t), will be selling coffee “across the pond.”

I hope readers with answers to these intriguing questions will email me.   Given the continuing culinary import of France, I think the awakening of La Belle France to the charms of specialty coffee  would have a salutary impact on the  specialty industry here in the United States, elsewhere in Europe and in Asia.

You can reach me at:  michaeleweissman@gmail.com

I’m back from two weeks in the northwestern corner of Brittany (in France), a rocky coastal area with prehistoric stone megaliths perched dramatically on cliffs above sandy beaches (the tides are among the highest in the world), fields of purple heather, palm trees–credit the Gulf Stream– picture perfect fishing villages, carrots growing in sand that taste more intensely carrot-like than anything you can imagine, red onions, fresh butter flecked with sea salt and on and on.    “Deep France,” was the English phrase a French woman who chatted me up in the Post Office used to describe this weather beaten region rich in pirate lore that even the French  consider off the beaten track.  The light was white toned, grey toned, pink toned, golden toned.  I felt like I was living in a painting for two weeks.

The weather  never climbed much above 60 or 65 degrees, perfect for hiking and exploring when the sun shined brightly as it did about half the time, a little bit demoralizing when it did not.

Here are two more pictures revealing my preoccupation with things gustatory:

Onion farmer stringing red onions for display prior to the Roscoff Onion festival–these onions may well be the sweetest on earth.

Black wheat (buckwheat) used to make buttery savory crepes with sauteed red onions, earthy Andouille sausage and other yummy ingredients (I wish I were eating one right now!)

Understanding that no one really wants to hear about someone else’s trip to France, I will cut to the chase right now and say that Brittany helped to redefine my notion of fresh and delicious, but the coffee was execrable, at times comically so.

The best coffee I drank in two weeks, was a cafe au lait from a pod machine!

The breakfast room of our lovely little hotel on the harbor in Roscoff reeked of coffee from a can set on a Bunn hotplate.  At the Micheline two-star, Restaurant Patrick Jeffroy in Carantec, we indulged in a four hour lunch in a private room overlooking the sea–by the time the monumentally mediocre espresso was served I was more or less too blissed out to care.

In the gorgeous town of Morgat that looks more like Provence than Brittany:

I ordered a cappuccino in a  little creperie  on the harbor and was served mounds of (yummy) whipped cream sprinkled with cocoa on top of espresso roasted, oh, say, two years ago.

In search of real coffee we made a trip to Morlaix where we had heard that a young “coffee guy” of the American and Northern European sort had  purchased a roaster and set up shop.  Alas, by the time we visited, he had gone belly up and his storefront was occupied by an Indian restaurant.

Hard to believe that people who attend so carefully to the taste of everything–the salt flecks in the butter!–pay no heed whatsoever to the coffee.

Our French friend Henri thinks that now that cigarettes have disappeared from French cafes and restaurants–I saw fewer smokers in Brittany than I see on the streets of New York City–a coffee revolution will follow.

More on this subject to follow….