I hate to admit I ever gave Starbucks any business, but after developing a taste for Celebes coffee, the more-or-less local Starbucks was the only place I could find it (where they label it as Sulawesi), so that’s where I bought it. After two recent visits with no success and an exclamation from one employee (“I’ve never even heard of it!”) and a dire utterance from another (“I think that might be one of the coffees they decided to make seasonal.”) I consulted the Web site and discovered it was true:
Based on customer feedback, Starbucks is making changes to our core assortment. Sulawesi will no longer be available as a core coffee, but will come back as a seasonal release. As an alternative, may we recommend that you try earthy and unpredictable, Sumatra Coffee.
The idea of arbitrarily making an agricultural product “seasonal” is ridiculous, especially since Sulawesi and Sumatra coffee beans come from the same archipelago. One is just as seasonal as the other. If it’s grown, it’s seasonal. What they mean is they will only sell it on special occasions, like the so-called “Christmas blend.” This makes no sense. If you happen to like Sulawesi coffee, you like it all year round, not just during certain days or months. If you have customers who want it, why not sell it?
I suspect another reason is behind this other than alleged “customer feedback.” What it is, I do not know, but I’m sure there was not an avalanche of requests from customers to stop carrying Sulawesi. In any event, it is their duty as coffee merchants to educate their customers about various higher end coffees if they want anyone to purchase them. At a real coffeehouse one can expect to see a decent variety of brewed coffees available to sample, but lately all I see at Starbucks is House Blend or some other weak, bitter, Latin American blend.
Yes, Sumatra is good. It’s one of my back-up coffees, but it isn’t Sulawesi/Celebes, and if Starbucks doesn’t deem it worthy enough to make a little shelf space for it, then I’ll find another coffeehouse or order it from another company with less of a soulless corporate mentality.
If I can’t get it from Grounds for Thought, I’ll start ordering it from Peet’s Coffee and Tea or Java Joe’s, or Geisha Coffee Roaster — and look, the last two are less expensive than Starbucks!
Yesterday morning, having been without coffee in my house for at least two weeks, I bought some Jamaica Blue Mountain from a local grocery. It was, unfortunately, already ground, but I was desperate. I made a pot yesterday, and it is good, but it isn’t Celebes/Sulawesi, and I’d still rather have Sumatra, Mocha Java, or Kenya AA when I can’t get it.
Tags: coffee
did you know, the whittaker pipe blend, called ‘ christmas blend’ and sold seasonally was just a bunch of odds and ends left over from a humidor bag or a jar, pinch of this handfull of that, happened to be around the holidays. Tee Hee, thought you would find it amusing, and oh all tobacco was 4.95 a lb. in christmas blend, but for the trouble of throwing it together it sold for 5.95 a lb. OH i miss that shoppe more and more. I mean, how many people can say in their life that part of their job description was squirting a flaming ashtray with windex on a daily basis. *sigh*. ~L
Yes, I did know that. We always referred to the Christmas Blend as the “Floorsweepings Special.” One of our colleagues actually used to smoke the counter sweepings on occasion, as sort of a joke.
I cant remember which employee it was, when i was at the C store, but he also used to smoke the counter sweepings. Since i loved to weigh up the pipe tobacco, he always would hand me a bag, relayed the oz. amount the customer wanted and end it with a “and make it messy”, my hint to spill a little on the counter with the other drippings. ~2 ounces of holmes 3, and make it messy… ~L