coffee business strategies

…and how appropriate, considering the volume of espresso that I had this morning!

In what I can honestly say is the single most impressive piece of writing and editing of a news story involving me, Erika Engle of the Honolulu Star Bulletin masterfully extracts the essence of a very complicated and obscure subject (coffee tasting and the Hawaii coffee industry) in a tidy 14 inch daily newspaper column. Somebody has to give out awards to reporters that deliver such clarity under tight restrictions, right? Hmm… maybe not.

On the surface, today’s Daily Buzz column “To Andrew Hetzel, it does amount to a hill of beans” appears to be a happy, touchy-feely, local boy does good article:

Andrew Hetzel of the Big Island is Hawaii’s first certified coffee cupping judge and instructor, after passing exacting testing by the Specialty Coffee Association of America this month.

Certified cuppers can grade coffee “from its green state on through the finished cup,” said Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the SCAA.

“It is a significant accomplishment, so kudos to him,” he said.

Isn’t that nice? Hooray for me! …and thank you Ric.

Now, read a little further:

He sees parallels between the Kona coffee industry and the American automotive industry.

Uh oh. That can’t be good. What is this, drama?

“I think that in Hawaii there’s been a reliance on the old-origin name to denote that the coffee tastes good. So it’s kind of like the Cadillac of the 1940s and 50s — but you know what? I drive a Honda.”

Ouch! Conflict.

He sees his role as that of a language tutor or translator, since grading has its own language to describe the multiple traits of any cuppa joe.

Hey, that Andrew guy isn’t the real focus of this play, is he. He’s just a messenger.

Grading will establish “a baseline to objectively rate the flavor and quality of our coffee,” which Hetzel sees as a step forward in the specialty coffee trade.

“That’s the key,” said Sotero Agoot, general manager at the 51-year-old Kona Pacific Farmers Cooperative. Agoot is a coffee farmer at a facility that has been in continual production for 100 years.

The co-op has been looking at ways to measure quality and “I don’t think you can do that arbitrarily without some third-party certifying entity,” Agoot said.

Hey, that’s it?!? Are you going to leave us hanging?

Yep, because there isn’t a resolution yet. Unlike a neatly scripted Korean soap opera series (thank you Nick) we don’t know how our real protagonist - Hawaii coffee, not me - will fare.

The article clearly speaks the known truth; and all in a 14 inch column. Bravo.

Unfortunately, when you read between the lines of this script it’s looking more like a tragedy than a comedy. I only get a few pages at a time, but hope that there’s a happy ending.