Main image: Beginning with the end in mind means beginning with the bean. (Nathan Dumlao/Unsplash)
It’s always true. The smallest aspects of the everyday say the most about the whole clattering cultural ecosystem in which our lives play out. Not that a cup of coffee is a small consideration if you’re a bean obsessive, a paid-up member of the latte literati. It was all so simple for the percolator generation. How has a plain little plant-based drink come to mean so much to so many?
The history of the thing is pretty much part and parcel of the well-trodden centuries of European colonial expansionism. A basic staple foodstuff in undeveloped lands became the sweetmeat of the powerful elsewhere. The ancient Silk Roads and the Spice Routes that had expedited trade overland east to west for centuries, lubricated by the tea bush, were about to be overtaken. When the far-adventuring ships of the 1600s scouting the coasts of Arabia spotted small trees dotted with bright crimson buds, they saw the profits in the craze that coffee would become.
The original coffee portafilter into Europe was the decadent mercantile capital of Venice. The first coffee house opened there in 1640. Bad news for the locals – try hailing a gondola for a masqued ball when they’re full of sacks of beans. After which, London claimed the vanguard in running this new commodity. Within the hubbub of its coffee houses, the brains of the day gave birth to the Royal Society and the London Stock Exchange.
Hamburg, as frontrunner of the Hanseatic League of northern trading territories, would soon be hard on London’s heels. Its first coffee house opened in 1677, and the Hamburg Coffee Exchange came to dominate the world market in storing, roasting and shipping, trading 24 million bags of the bean in its first 18 months.
Keeping it grounded for coming on 140 years since the Hamburg Coffee Exchange perked into being, the city’s lively Speicherstadt warehouse district is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. (Alamy)
So much for history. What that doesn’t answer is how the humble coffee bean has eventually mutated into a cultural marker that differentiates the steam of nations. Coffee isn’t just coffee. The way people across the drift of continents consume the world’s most ubiquitous drink (400 billion cups a year) tells us something about how differently we live our lives.
Let’s resurrect a term from encyclopedias gone by: the old world and the new. Hardly surprising that the longer a country’s past the deeper its traditions persist. And no surprise if you travel today in Greece or Turkey, especially in their less internationalized regions, you find quaint pots pouring a thick mix of coffee into small cups, often with a sweet edible or two, around pavement tables busy with conversation. Here coffee sits suffused within a collective ritual. If that sounds a bit antique cradle of civilization, it happens in Stockholm too.
In the white light of the Scandinavian hi-tech office day, a mid-morning fika of coffee with cinnamon buns brings colleagues together. In Paris coffee always marks a pause. The French will happily prolong a sit-down bistro lunch with un p’tit café. And everyone in Italy will gladly dance with anyone over the critical lines between espresso, ristretto and macchiato, while correcting you that it’s not foam it’s crema. In short, in the longitudes of the ancient West, coffee retains the vestiges of a communal pursuit.
Café, Istanbul, 1905. No macchiatos or mobile phones, just moustaches, stout boots and conversation. And so far no coffee corporations. (Shutterstock)
Which goes some way to explaining why Starbucks doesn’t rule the world quite yet. It’s getting there, with corporate declarations of intent to increase store numbers from the current 38,000 to 55,000 by 2030 – and the plan stretches beyond drive-thrus in the Midwestern United States. “Three out of every four new stores over the near term is expected to be opened outside of the U.S. as our store portfolio becomes increasingly global,” according to Michael Conway, president of the brand’s international divisions. Shares leapt 9.5% on the news.
With a market cap of $115 billion, Starbucks leads the corporatization of the coffee bean. In China, its biggest market after the U.S., the brand opens a new store every nine hours. Including the rest of the globe, that slows to one every 15 hours. Critics warn that such rampant expansionism endangers indigenous and local coffee cultures wherever Starbucks grows, which rather brings us full circle back to the colonial forays that saw the West discover coffee in the first place. And it’s hard to deny the logic that says Starbucks – and every one of its hydra-headed competitors – is simply responding to the public thirst.
Contrasting signs of the times. The infiltration of Starbucks into China was a slow drip to start, but today the brand is opening a new store there every nine hours. That’s roughly how long it takes for one hipster pour in Portland, Oregon. (Shutterstock)
Social anthropologists viewed the slow drip of the West’s bean obsession through a different lens. The business model of corporate coffee shops promotes a cultural direction they classify as individualistic, as opposed to the collectivist instincts of the old world. In the new world, and particularly in North America with its steer towards takeaway instead of sitting in at a shared table, coffee is designed to fulfil a more pragmatic and perfunctory function of fueling a higher-octane social pace.
Other students of the human zoo disagree. They cite coffee spots as fulfilling a social need on the journey between home and office. Urban sociologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of West Florida Ray Oldenburg claims that these so-called third places “host regular, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work. They are the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grassroots of democracy.”
Really? Most surveillance camera footage from inside any franchise coffee shop shows social engagement to mean social media silently scrolled while flat-whites are fixed. The Starbucks model is masterful in promoting a consumer experience based on individual commercial transactions. And as for those laptop nomads lingering at tables, unlikely they’ll be forming a glee club together any time soon.
Unposed photograph of a businessman late for his 10am appointment with a 20-oz quadruple frappo-latte. (Shutterstock)
Whichever world we inhabit, old or new – around the communal café table, or clutching that 20-ounce cardboard juggernaut of joe to help us march down the street – our collective obsession with coffee is set to last. Its apparent cool quotient sees a positive trajectory with every new unexpected concoction. One website suggests avocado coffee with chocolate syrup is the next thing. Another, orange espresso tonic. And straight down Artisanal Avenue, there’s a world of complex coffee sleeve garters with 58-gram sluice brews to keep you up to date.
But don’t rest easy, coffee hounds. Look over your shoulder. Hear those fluorescent K-pop tracks blaring from the bubble-tea parlors? It’s the rhythm of rampant expansionism. And it’s sounding insistently upbeat.
Research by Catherine Dunwoody
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