Coffee By Thirty

If you haven’t heard of it yet, Coke has released their latest attempt at specialty beverages. By combining Coca-Cola with coffee, America is presented with Coca-Cola Blak.

How is it? Cokey and cream soda-ey and cheapo coffee-ey and tobaccoey. It’s a lot of flavors, each discernable, but not necessarily good at any point. It’s just…there.

I get the impression Coke doesn’t feel too strongly about this drink - I only know it’s coffee flavored because it’s covered in the coffee trade journals. The bottle claims it’s a carbonated fusion beverage; the word coffee is nowhere to be found except in the ingredients list. Right after caramel color and natural flavors. Mmm. Natural flavors.

In all, thanks Coke for cashing in on the specialty coffee industry. I’ll finish my four pack, but I won’t be buying Blak again. Of course, with your track record of killing new beverages, I may not have the chance to buy it again anyway.

Sunday’s Ann Arbor News stated Ann Arbor, Michigan, home to the University of Michigan, has one coffee house per 3,500 residents. Compare that to my target city, where the ratio is one coffee house per 5,000 residents.

And that ratio in Ann Arbor is expected to continue to shrink.

That’s fascinating. And incredibly scary. In a business where every single sale is critical, that’s a lot of competition dilluting the market.

Obviously, being a college town, Ann Arbor can probably take those kinds of numbers. Around here, if we suddenly had that ratio, there would be a few less coffee houses in town.

“Why?” you may ask. “3,500 is a lot of people every day.” To which I say “poppycock.”

Just because my ratio is one shop : 3,500 citizens, doesn’t mean I see 3,500 people a day. The SCAA tells me a mere %16 of the Adult Population drinks specialty coffee on a daily basis. That just knocked 3,500 down to 560. That doesn’t even consider the people who brew specialty beans at home, or the fact that not everyone visits their coffee house on a daily basis. That number gets pretty grim, doesn’t it?

Yikes, indeed.