Coffee, Metaphor for Democracy

Freshly picked coffee cherries

COFFEE, METAPHOR FOR DEMOCRACY

There is no reason a cup of joe should be more than $1, and yet we are totally comfortable with the increased costs that have accompanied coffee’s reascension. Is that because post-recession, it’s easier to distinguish your values and beliefs with something material, like a cup of coffee? Or we believe that something brought to market under better conditions is worth paying a bit more for? Regardless of the reasons underpinning the financials of coffee, Locol’s $1 cup represents a paradigm shift and a return to a mean—perhaps it is possible to have both sustainably raised coffee that tastes delicious.

Oliver Strand of the New York Times recently reported on Locol’s brews, and why the company is so adamant in redefining our centuries-old coffee culture:

“There’s an extreme democratization that I really want to make happen in coffee,” said Tony Konecny, the head of Locol’s coffee operation, who goes by Tonx. Good coffee, he said, should be brought to a broad audience, not just a “self-selecting group” of epicures.

Mr. Konecny’s ambitions for Yes Plz go beyond selling a high-quality cup of coffee at that magic price point, though he knows that it sends a powerful message. What he wants to do is shift the very nature of coffee culture. He has no patience for what he calls the “culinary burlesque” of pour-over bars, with their solemn baristas and potted succulents. “It’s dress-up,” he said.

Those settings and presentations, he said, send the wrong message: that good coffee must also be expensive and fetishized. “We have become overly focused on this ingredient preciousness, single-origin puritanism,” he said. As a result, he added, coffee just keeps getting “fancier and fancier.”

Link: https://longreads.com/2017/05/04/good-coffee-shouldnt-have-to-cost-more-than-1/

We agree with the author that the nectar of the gods should be within reach of the common tao.

THREE COFFEE POEMS

Link: https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2016/10/three-coffee-poems.html