Twitter¹, on the other hand, suggested that it was Costa Coffee who were going to put an 11oz flat White on the menu in the new year.

This won’t be a surprise to some people who’ve been predicting this for the last couple of months.²

If this is indeed true I look forward to the many and varied reactions to this. I hope that most independents, especially those in London, greet the decision with relief.

Recent reading³ has really reminded me that in any competitive environment, be it selling coffee or evolutionary biology, any competitive advantage gained (through mutation or innovation) is temporary. Everyone caught up, either because they copied or because the pool of competitors shrank to only those with an old advantage.

Innovating just the once is fine in the short term, but it needs to continue to be a successful long term strategy.

The flat white⁴ is not a magic bullet that can help recover declining coffee sales. The brands are increasingly aware of a new breed of independents and are looking to react. By picking on the flat white they will have made the classic mistake of confusion correlation with causation.  Lots of the best shops in the UK offer a flat white (correlation) but they are not successful because they serve flat whites (causation).  This is an apparently easy to mistake to make, going by the last broadsheet article about the flat white.  Independents know that it is a myriad of things that make them better than the chains, and should be relieved that despite the scrutiny the chains are likely to miss the key factors that give them an advantage.

That said – it should remind independents that while they still have the advantage it won’t last for long and that they have the attention and the interest of the largest coffee operators in the UK.  For the coffee-quality focused amongst us to be truly successful we have to constantly keep pushing forwards, and never give them the chance to catch up.

Hopefully there will be some official comment from either Starbucks or Costa that I can link to in the next couple of days.  Thoughts on this from all of you would be very welcome.

UPDATE: So it has been confirmed that Costa are putting them on the menu.  I haven’t found any mention of Starbucks anywhere.  (I did twitter at the UK MD but haven’t had a response yet.)

UPDATE: Starbucks have now also confirmed that they will be serving the flat white in London as of next week, and across the UK from January.

UPDATE: The broadsheet article mentioned above can now be found here.  Eric (who I am not sure really claims to be the first man serving flat whites in London) made me chuckle with his comment.  It is nice to see some explanation from Starbucks on why they are doing it.  I am more curious about the apparent customer demand for it – I would imagine the kind of people who would want a flat white wouldn’t head to Starbucks to try and get them to make something off menu.  Will Costa be grumpy they got beaten to the punch?

1. Sources here and here, as well as a couple of DMs
2. Most notably and repeatedly Ian Boughton in his Coffee House magazine
3. The Red Queen by Matt Ridley
4. essentially a small, strong latte

Square Mile Coffee Roasters takes its name in part from a time when London had a coffee culture – one of the strongest in the world, and in what is now the financial heart of London there were hundreds upon hundreds of coffee houses that would morph and evolve into different businesses and exert many and varied effects on a cross section of culture and commerce.

What is English coffee culture now? Sadly it is one of two things:

1). A semi apologetic, continued embrace of instant coffee. We managed to move past most freeze dried food (though I know some people have a weird fondness for Smash!) The thing is we all know it is bad, as a nation we joke about it and then get away with it by playing the anti-snobbery card.

2). An embrace of Americanised Italian coffee retail – chains dominate our high street (in all areas of retail) and we are served faux-Italian coffee drinks in convenient (for the retailer) portions.

All of this is very negative, and this isn’t a negative post. It really is a post with a hypothetical question:

What would I wish English coffee culture to be like ten years from now? What would be its defining qualities that distinguish it from other strong coffee cultures?

This is a wish list remember, and we can discuss how to get there afterwards. If I were treat English coffee culture as a blank canvas then I think there are a few priorities:

Traceability – people understand what they are drinking, and understand the factors influencing their choice. I really have no issue with labels like Fair Trade as long as the consumer understandings what the label means. More than that I wish people would want to know exactly where and how the coffee was grown.

Preference – people making concious and informed choices about their coffee, based on an understanding of the range of tastes, flavours and possibilities within the spectrum of coffee. This is just a long way of saying: death to the phrase “coffee is just coffee.”

Seasonality – this is a growing movement in food, and I hope coffee gets the opportunity to be included and swept along with other seasonal products. There is no downside to people understanding and embracing seasonality, enjoying fresh crops for those months where they really do taste fresh.

A strong base of brewed coffee – right now espresso drinks are the launching pad to getting people into coffee. Brewed coffee just isn’t as sexy as espresso, but I think a little coffee grinder and a french press in every home doesn’t involve a huge spend but would re-ignite people’s fondness for ritual and make coffee more accessable (more on this very important topic in a paragraph or two). Right now a lot of espresso machines are going into people’s home and the resentment of the process and the spend is just another reason to justify digging out the Nescafe. I don’t want to get rid of espresso, I just want it to be another weapon in the arsenal of coffee brewing. Espresso shouldn’t be the only method associated with quality.

These are all fine ideas but where is the roadmap to get there. It all comes down to one word: accessability. Right now the hardest thing to overcome isn’t monetary – we aren’t very precise spenders, despite the credit crunch and all – but we are terrified of appearing to be snobbish about anything. Snobbery has a terrible name. How the idea of not wanting to accept something below standard, something simply not good enough got a bad reputation I don’t know, but it certainly did. I am a snob. I don’t want to drink something that tastes bad. I don’t want to eat something that tastes bad and will probably hasten my demise (I am looking at you Ronald McD.). Yes, anti-snobbery is also linked in to anti-intelluctualism which dogs many cultures (but not all). I don’t really understand how knowledge and understanding aren’t desirable but many aspects of our cultures do really tell us this is the case. Maybe this is just the little bullied geek in me talking, but ironically it just seems a very stupid way to go about things.

Essentially we need to make it ok to love coffee, the way it is sort of ok to love wine, or beer (but not real Ale, we are still suspicious of them), or great food or cinema. I don’t think the super premium stuff is the way to do that, though it could certainly be a tool. The problem with the super premium lots of coffee is that because of the price it gets special treatment, exclusive treatment and it is very easy to dismiss as coffee for odd-ball enthusiasts. Exlusive by its very definition is not where I want to go.

That doesn’t mean we don’t need quality coffee – we need coffees that show distinct characteristics, often (but not always) indicicative of their geography and process and we need to roast and serve them as transparently as possible. We need to get people to fall in love with the product and not just the business that serve retails/serves it because if that business closes it must leave behind coffee aware and coffee thirsty consumers who still want to drink coffee, not just brand-x coffee. (though that doesn’t make that much sense for those of us starting up brand-x coffee!)

I really wanted to write this article as a roadmap for us, as well as (hopefully) a jumping off point for debate. Thoughts are welcome in the comments.

We arrived a little late and the group of about 30 had already been split into three groups.  One group were with Se Gorman and he was talking about cappuccinos (with reference to competition), another group with Ed Buston for his espresso workshop and then the final group were with WBC judge Jeremy Regan so they could ask questions about the rules and he could go through the scoresheets and make sure they understood how they were being judged.  I kind of flitted about taking the occasional photo and trying not to get in the way.

Se:

Ed:

Jeremy:

A lot of people attending were competing and many were first time competitors so it was great for them to know a little bit more about what is expected and it can only have a positive effect on the level of competition in the UK.

After a spot of luncheon the group was split into two and one group went upstairs to cup with Peter James of James Gourmet.  Eight coffees were put on the table, 4 commercial blends, a couple of specialty blends, a mill grade and a single estate.  Cupping for the first time is quite intimidating and in a large group it is often difficult to encourage people to speak up and plant a flag of opinion but as people slowly did it was great to see their faces light up as they realised that they were very capable of picking out differences and that just about everyone agreed with them.

The other group were downstairs messing about with signature drink stuff.  A number of my own (horrifically) failed experiments make me nervous about off the cuff sig drink creations but I tasted a couple of pretty good drinks today, excellent considering how quickly they had been put together.  However I didn’t get much time to hang out in this session as I got stuck in to helping out with the grunt work of the cupping.

A big part of any jam is about baristas meeting and chatting to other baristas.  There were people who had traveled a very long way to be there today which was very cool.  It all ended around half five and we headed back to the smog of London.  A big thank you to everyone involved in making today happen – it was a lot of fun and very much appreciated.

Would love the opinion of anyone who attended?  What did you think?  What did you like?  What would you like to see improved?