Journey to the World of Consumer Coffee - Part 2- Target

After I found out and got disappointed by how World Market sales coffee,, I was curious about other US supermarkets how coffee is sold.   Coffee is extremely time sensitive  material where the peak of the taste is known to be from a day to 2 weeks.  Yet, I found out that World Market sells coffee with label of "best before" for months.I got curious to see how other supermarkets sell coffee in the United States. I tried to see how Target sells coffee.

Target is US based retail giant having close to 2000 retail locations in US (source: Wikipedia).  They tend to target middle to upper class consumers, so I was hoping to find something better than World Mart, but that was not the case.

Coffee at Target


There is a whole isle of coffee section at Target.   Comparing to World Market, they surely carry a lot more variety of coffee.  The left side of the isle is all the packaged coffee and right side of isle is filled with K-cup coffee.  It is amazing to see how quickly K-cups are gaining momentum in such short period of time; few years ago people didn't even hear about K-cups now half of coffee section is filled with K-cup. I personally don't mind about K-cup, and I especially like how the coffee is sealed airtight to eliminate being stale.

Target Coffee K-cup
Half of coffee section at Target is K-Cup
There are many different brand you find on the shelf; well-known names such as Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks are being carried. Unfortunately, just like World Market; majority of the coffee packaged at Target are ground coffee, it is difficult to find whole bean coffee. I reach to a whole bean Starbucks coffee, and looked the back. I do not see roasted date like what I saw on Starbucks Reserve.  They must have date somewhere; I looked and looked and found a printed letters which is very hard to find is indicating "BEST BEFORE: 19DEC2015".  December 2015 is 6 months from now.

Starbucks coffee sold at Target
You can imagine my disappointment when I saw it.  The coffee specialist that I like is selling 6 months old coffee.  I looked further but I found no coffee with "roasted date" at Target either.  All coffee has "Best Before" without mentioning the roasted date.


Maybe all supermarket sells coffee this way... I almost feel betrayed as coffee consumer.  I now really want to try digging deeper into how the real world of consumer coffee is.

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Journey to the World of Consumer Coffee - Part 1 - World Market

Everyone has that time, right? Out of coffee. It is also known as emergency.

With all the visits to the local roasters and roasting my own coffee, I thought I would never run out of coffee, but I did.  Worst of all, I did not have time to go to any roasters. Starbucks was an option, but for some reason I wanted to try out something new.  So I tried World Market, and found something surprising.

 

Coffee From World Market


World Market has a section dedicated for coffee
I like World Market. They often have "wired" stuffs from all over the world, and I tend to enjoy browsing around for some unusual stuffs.  Because of it, I was curious to see what World Market has to offer for their coffee selection. 

World Market has two shelves dedicated to coffee in the food section, great!  They also have section for their tea which is about the same size as coffee section.

Not Much Selection For Whole Bean

My first disappointment comes when I try to see each of the package to select which bean to pick. All the bags I see are already ground. Really? For all the coffee lovers, you know what ground coffee means : stale.  I have to admit that these shops are targeting regular consumers who might not have grinders. Out of about 30+ selections of coffee, only 5 are whole beans.

$2 More For Fair Trade Certified

Out of 5 available options for whole beans, there are two colors : brown and green.  The difference? Green one is two dollars more ($8.99 vs $6.99) and it is labeled as "Fair Trade Certified".  OK, it is pretty common these days to pay extra for "fairness", but I always wonder how non-fair coffees are purchased in that case.

World Market Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee

After serious consideration between 5 selections, I picked Costa Rican Terrazu, the only fair trade certified whole bean option available in the entire World Market.
World Market Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee
World Market Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee
World Market Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee - Back
World Market Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee - Back
World Market Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee - Their roast is darker roasted
World Market Costa Rican Tarrazu Coffee - Their roast is darker roasted

 

No Roast Date?


I noticed something seriously wrong after I got home and looked at the package again.  I have been going to all the serious coffee roasters around and I always see Roast Date noted on all the coffee I buy.

World Market does not have Roast Date.

Instead, there is "Best Before" next to mechanical bar code indicating "Best Before" four months from today. Wow!  Who knows how long has this coffee have been on the shelf before today.  Coffee is known to have the peak of its taste for about a week after roasting.  Four months. Really?


Is this how the large companies treat coffee and distribute?  Do they keep coffee on shelf for months without telling consumers when the coffee was actually roasted?

I decided to explore how other "Consumer Coffee" are being distributed by these large companies.

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