A meeting with an old friend yesterday took place, inevitably, in a coffee shop. No, not the sort in which one might purchase drugs, but the sort in which one would purchase coffee. This particular coffee shop was situated along a busy Bristol street which is almost impossible to navigate without squeezing past yet another coffee shop. The coffee was perfectly adequate, as I expected it to be given that an entire pack of ground coffee in Aldi costs considerably less than the one medium-sized portion I ordered, and after I had queued for what seemed like an eternity, I looked around this very busy establishment I settled back to enjoy the near £4 worth of Americano I had purchased. Clearly, the owners of this chain were doing very nicely, thank you.
I am but a simple man and enjoy my coffee almost, but not completely, black with a small portion of sweetener. A not quite black coffee I would call it. But the fancy dan way these coffee shops call their bog standard coffee is the Americano or the American. It’s just bullshit.
My coffee – sorry, Americano – was made by, and here I quote from Wikipedia so it must be true, “forcing hot water under high pressure through finely ground coffee beans”. This means an Espresso, and one or two Espressos, in a bigger cup gives you an Americano, or as I would refer to it an technical terms a cup of coffee. And that’s all it is. But in the modern world, there simply has to be a menu of different drinks, many of which bear only a passing resemblance to coffee. The chalkboard yesterday gave me numerous options:
Latte, Cappuccino, Flat White, Mocha, Espresso and of course my Americano. In addition, there are numerous derivations of the various types for the more discerning coffee drinker. My choice will always be a coffee without, as I always say, any shit in it. Today, I learned that the Behemoth chain Costa is likely to be flogged off by its owner Coca Cola.
The Costa website refers to the history of the company which was founded by two Italian migrants to London (don’t tell Nigel Farage) called Costa. For some reason, it neglects to add that the Costa brothers flogged the company to Coca Cola donkey’s years ago and it is a family business in the same way that McDonalds is. Having given us a coffee shop on every street corner in the UK, Coca Cola have had enough. Frankly, so have I.
“Going out for a coffee” appears to be a thing among many folk. Instead of purchasing a modestly priced coffee maker from Sainsbury’s and making the coffee yourself, people prefer to visit a coffee shop. That is probably because they are far more sociable than I am and because they don’t mind being ripped off. Despite having been brought up in the coffee shop environment by virtue of my Dutch mother, I have never been able to understand the point of forcing one’s self to spend far more money on a product than I might do at home. Still, each to their own.
The reason why there is a Costa on every street corner, as well as Starbuck’s, Coffee Number One, Grounded is simple: there’s money in it. “A cup of tea, please,” you ask and the smiling assistant pours boiling water on a tea bag worth pennies and says, “That’ll be £3.50, Sir.” Even Dick Turpin wore a mask.
Like TV cookery shows, coffee is the new rock and roll. As the pub heads gradually to extinction, I wonder if in a few years we won’t be heading to the local for a pint, but for a particular type of coffee. Instead of six pints of overpriced generic lager, we will consume coffees all evening before ending with shots (of Espresso).
Meanwhile,. I shall continue to mostly consume my coffee at home, as I enjoy my red wine, because it’s much cheaper and, more importantly, much better.
There I go again, completely out of step with our evolving society, unable to understand the attractions of coffee shops, in the same way that I have never understood the delights of Star Wars, Cruise Ship holidays, The X Factor, Instagram, Queen and Carling lager. Reading through that list, it feels rather good to be out of step. Give me a mug of Aldi House ground coffee any day of the week, thank you very much.
