America, the land of the free is one of the biggest consumers of coffee. About 83 percent of adults drink coffee in the U.S, but in this land where their daily routine is fueled by coffee, still why Americans drink bad coffee?
People in America have their own coffee machines at home, and you can hardly spot coffee places whether you are walking on the streets, in the downtown, or in the corners of the city you can spot a coffee shop where you can order, and sip a cup of coffee. The coffee trend in America might fancy itself to high-end coffee drinkers. But this is just a show-off, where people today are actually drinking worst coffee than they have in the past.
Yes, that is true Americans today are drinking bad coffee, the reason behind this is because they value cheapness over quality — and convenience over everything. “A lot of people in America would take a sip of single origin high-end coffee and not appreciate the taste,” said Howard Telford, an industry analyst at market research firm Euromonitor.
“Price is important because if you can’t afford it, you can’t buy it, but convenience is the one thing that’s really changing trends these days,” Howard added. Indeed, the bulk of this country runs not on single-drip artisanal coffee, but standard, pre-ground coffee, which, by most coffee snobs’ measures, is one of coffee’s most inferior forms.
With a nation that fuels most individuals to coffee before doing their daily routine, it’s no wonder that people choose convenience over quality. Only eight percent of fresh whole beans are bought to coffee merchants, which upscale coffee brewers, like Blue Bottle, will tell you is the much better way to buy coffee beans. And the gap between fresh coffee beans and pre-ground coffee beans is large enough that ground coffee beans are outpacing the whole beans— it’s increasing its lead, each and every year.
One of the biggest trends today is the coffee pods or the single serve coffee, which come pre-ground, provides what is without question the most compelling evidence of the country’s desire for convenience. According to data from Euromonitor, “they have jumped more than tenfold since 2009 alone. And they’re still rising at an annual clip of more than 30 percent. And pod coffee machines, to further vindicate the trend, have been outselling drip coffee machines since 2013. ”
Americans growing loved with single-serve pods has made Keurig Green Mountain, the maker of K-Cups, the best-selling brand of coffee in the United States. Keurig Green Mountain now controls more than 20 percent of the U.S. retail market for coffee, roughly the same as the next two — Folgers and Starbucks — combined.
Even the big coffee chain is giving their best effort to have more coffee shop around the country, and other artisanal coffee business seems like their efforts are not enough to compete with the brands like Keurig, Folgers, Maxwell, Gevalia and other brands who sell pre-ground coffee’s.
“There’s a small subset of consumers that are really interested in artisanal coffees,” Telford said. “But that certainly isn’t the case nationwide.”
While the top-tier coffee imagines the country in which everyone can have fresh, ground beans delivered to their doorstep, the bulk of America is still perfectly happy drinking the basic stuff.
Source The Washington Post
