Coffee Lover's Attempt for A Perfect Cup of Coffee: Starbucks

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How People Drink Coffee in India

Espresso served at Coffee Shop, Barista in India 2006

Espresso War 2006 vs 2015 in India
Above picture was taken at a popular coffee shop Barista in Chandigarh, India in 2006. Six years before first Starbucks opened in India in 2012, espresso drink of this type back then was very luxury item but people still visited these espresso shop to get very well made latte or capchino. A cup in above picture costed about 300 Indian rupees for a cup (About US$6); it was considered luxury where a good meal with a soft drink could be purchased less than 200 Indian rupees easily back in 2006. This type of espresso shops were usually new and very clean with often a door man opening door for you. You can see the quality of the drink and coffee shop just by looking at latte art in the picture!

Fast forward 9 years to the year of 2015. Espresso wars are hotter in India than some streets of Portland or Seattle now. Below left picture is one of the major player of UK base espresso bars Costa Coffee, right is Starbucks in India; you find them more often now at airport and major city corners. You find these coffee shops and other coffee shops including Barista (where above picture was taken in 2006) all over city. Other than the fact that Indian capchino has a lot more portion of milk then how Americans drink capchino, the drinks are made pretty much the same way in these coffee shops in India compared to ones in America. The price is still about 300 Indian ruppees or so (US $5) but with inflation and other factors, 300 ruppees are a lot more affordable price than back 9 years ago. Shops also look more casual now and less number of door man at a door.

Starbucks in India, 2015

UK Base Costa Coffee in India, 2015

Seeing Indians as Foreigner
As you know, I am from Japan and I live in Portland, USA. I had a very rare opportunity to visit both North and South India (Chandigarh and Chennai) for 1.5 months this year (2015) after living in the North (Chandigarh) in 2006 for over half an year. This article is based on my experience living in India as foreigner.

Coffee in Every Day India
Generally, espresso like mentioned above is still considered something you would have for occasion in most people in India. In fact, most people drink coffee very casual and quite a lot here. Drinking hot drink throughout day is part of most daily people's life. You find coffee/tea shops all over city and even on the street; in fact, you would be surprised to see how busy these tea boys are on the street!

In general, South Indians tend to drink more coffee, where North Indians have more preference of drinking tea instead of coffee. This is also due to the fact that coffee production is in the south India mainly due to the climate reason. (Source: Wikipiedia - Coffee Production in India) Either coffee or tea is commonly drank with milk and sugar. When you order coffee/tea blindly without telling anything on the street, they assume you want it with milk and sugar.

Most common way to prepare coffee at home or even on street is to boil milk and water with coffee to boil using pan. Milk and water proportion varies depend on preference, I have seen 100% milk (no water) to somewhat like 6/4 portion of milk and water. When the water comes to boil, heat is reduced to avoid spill, but then increased again. It is common to repeat this boil process for couple of times. If a person prefers "dark" coffee, you would do it more (like 5-10 times); this way more flavor of milk goes into the drink. This cooking method require full attention of the cook to control the temperature of the coffee making it more labor intensive than American way of drip coffee.

Supermarket in India Coffee Section - a lot of instants...

Coffee in Indian Hotel

It is common to see grind coffee to be used in above boil method, but very often instant coffee is used. In fact, when you go to grocery shop; the coffee section isle you see many instants; very less of non-instant coffee. This is sad reality of home coffee in India. However, due to the way cooking is done in milk, the coffee actually taste very well in fact even it is instant.

In the south, I found it very interesting that coffee is served in a metal cup and a bowl. You then flip coffee in the air to cool the coffee down to the temperature of your preference. I found it very difficult to do in the beginning, but got used to it over time.

Coffee is vegetarian, isn't it?
It feels very natural in India to think either veg or non-veg as you find many Indians being vegetarian and a lot of options are available for vegetarian cuisines in India. Coffee is no exception to the rule. In India, you find green circle symbol notating that the product is vegetarian. Coffee usually also has the symbol indicating that it is vegetarian as well. I never consciously thought about it, but coffee is vegetarian isn't it? I found it odd to find this symbol even on shampoo and toothbrush in India, but coffee is no exception!

Back of coffee provided at Indian Hotel, note the green symbol notifying vegetarian.

Green circle symbols are used everywhere in

India notating that the product is vegetarian.

Indian Coffee at Delhi Airport
On the way back from India, I found that India Delhi Duty Free sells variety of Indian Coffee and Tea. It is a good spot to get clean souvenir. The price is little hiked up from the price at local shops, but the quality of the products seem to be very well you only find well packaged items which can easily be gift.

Delhi International Airport carries Indian Coffee and Tea

Duty Free selling Indian Coffee & Tea

I decided to buy coffee from Blue Tokai Coffee Roaster (Link) at the Duty Free shop. I thought US$12 for 100g of coffee is quite expensive and it is very unfortunate that they only provide ground coffee. No un-grounded beans were option at duty free. (In fact, very less people in India own coffee grinder, so you almost never see coffee sold un-grounded in India which is another sad point to note...)

Below are some pictures of Blue Tokai Coffee Roaster (Link) I got. It has very strong coffee smell which is very good especially when it is drunk with milk in a way like mentioned above. The roast of this particular one was lightly roasted, and ground very fine so that it was very hard to use in french press, but again it tasted very well in milk, yes the Indian way!

Blue Tokai Coffee - Back


Blue Tokai Coffee - Front

Blue Tokai Coffee - Bottom

Blue Tokai Coffee

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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.

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.

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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Un-Boxing Starbucks Reserve Online

Earlier I posted about my visit to Starbucks Reserve in Seattle, and I truly enjoyed their new attraction and the coffee they serve. I found out that they sell their coffee online, so I thought I would try out and see how it goes.

What I found out after ordering online is that they do not deliver the coffee right away like other online retailer. Their current model is subscription model where they send freshly roasted coffee every month. So I was opted to receive the coffee the next month without not knowing it. (Maybe I didn't pay too much attention when ordering online.) After a month of the order (I almost forgot about the fact that I ordered), I received an email from Starbucks saying that the coffee was just roasted, and it is now on its way to me. That is nice. I only subscribed for one month (one order), but it would be nice to receive freshly roasted coffee every month.

Email from Starbucks Reserve telling me that the coffee is on my way.

Two days later I receive the box in mail.

Here is the box received.

I do like their design with black and gold.

The box is pretty elegant looking and with their signature design of Star over R. The color of black and gold make it look very authentic.

Here are pictures of un-boxing Starbucks Reserve Coffee Online!

Opening the box.

Box opens nicely from the side.

It is almost like a jewelry box; nicely done. The coffee and the little card fits perfectly.

And here is the coffee. I selected Kenya.

There are some wordings on the side.

Here is the coffee, and I like the card explaining about the coffee.

Here is the back of the coffee, and the roasted date is printed on the bag and matches with the date I received the email.

When I smelled the coffee from the one-way valve of the bag, the faint smell of the rich coffee is just to die for. The coffee; however, did not retain much of the gorgeous aroma when I brew them. The aroma is too faint to remain when brewing, which is too bad. I may need to skill up how I brew the coffee so that I can retain the aroma more.

Starbucks Reserve coffee is now sold in Starbucks store too.

I notice that the Starbucks Reserve coffee beans are now sold at the shelf of regular Starbucks. I did not see Kenya which I ordered online, but the price of the items in the store is a bit cheaper than buying online, but the experience of purchasing online process was something I did enjoy.

Teavana Bar, New York - New Starbucks Venture Coming to Tokyo

I heard today from news in Japan that Starbucks is opening their new venture of Teavana Bar in Tokyo soon. This reminded me of my visit in New York last summer (2014) when I visited their first concept store in New York. I think this is another brilliant new idea Starbucks is coming up like their Starbucks Reserve venture (see my previous post about Starbucks Reserve.)

Teavana Bar is first opened in the upper east side of Manhattan in October of 2013. (see news about their opening) The concept is that they make specialized tea drinks (like Chai Tea Latte) based on the selections of wide variety of teas from Teavana. Teavana is a Georgia base tea company started in 1997 and bought by Starbucks in December of 2012; they have more than 400 stores mostly in US and Canada as of now(2015). If you have lived in US, you must have seen them in many of shopping malls where they sell selections of tea, and they serve the samples in extremely heavy teapot that breaks the arm by holding them. I always enjoyed to have a bit of sample each time I walk by their shop. After Starbucks purchased Teavana, they have started a new venture to bring the tea industry and tea drinkers into specialized drinks. I am a big coffee fan, and not too much of tea drinker; however, knowing what Starbucks have done to change the coffee industry, if there is someone who can change the tea industry would be them I think.

And here is my experience when I visited the first Teavana Bar.

Teavana Bar is located 2 blocks from Lexington Avenue/63rd. St. Station in upper east side of Manhattan. It takes about 20 minutes via Subway from Times Square where most of the tourists visit, so I was surprised that they built their first concept store outside of busy location. (That was back in 2014, now there is another shop on Broadway.) I guess they wanted to test out their concept to see how the upper middle class people react. As you get out of the subway station, you notice that the area is for wealthy city living; all the shops around the area are targeting high-end residential shoppers in the area, no hotdog stands.

Outside First Teavana Bar, NYC

Once you go inside, the shop is not big but you see the clean simple modern design with tea cans stacked up to the ceiling like their Teavana shops in the mall.

The look inside is somewhat similar to Starbucks

They let you smell their teas that is stacked up to the wall.

I was surprised to see that there are very few people in the shop. When I visited last summer (2014), the shop has only been open for half an year, and this was the only Teavana Shop available anywhere back then. I heard the news, and I even come all the way from Portland to visit. I expected some more people to be in the shop.

Less people helped me to enjoy more though. I had a very nice chat with Barista and she has helped me to pick the right tea that I liked. She asked me what kind of teas I like, I told her that I like coffee but that didn't help. I honestly don't know much about tea so I told her that I like Ooolong tea, and she let me select ones from the line of Oolong. I had a nice time chatting with Barista, and that selection process took me 10 minutes or so. I thank that there were less people in the shop, if there are miles of people waiting behind me, I wouldn't have enjoyed this 10 minutes with the Barista. I guarantee you that the experience will not be the same in Tokyo!

I have different options for how the tea is to be prepared for me. Sounds familiar, isn't it?

Barista asks me how I want the tea to be prepared, I decided to go with latte style. She tells me that the selection of the tea that I selected goes very well with milk. That is great. She is now preparing the tea for me. The process looked pretty similar to how espresso is being made. I wonder if "Barista" is a good word for them serving tea, but with the effort of making the perfect cup, I would think a word "Barista" surely fits what they are doing.

The cup is nicely designed.

They have printed label like Starbucks

Now I have my drink ready. The first thing I notice when I hold the cup is the texture of the cup. It has the embedded design which has very nice feeling in hand. There is a printed label sticker with the information about the order; we are all pretty familiar with this concept from espresso coffee by now, but first time I see on tea.

As I said earlier, I am not too much of a tea drinker, but I truly did enjoy the fresh experience of Starbucks Teavana Bar. I hope this soon becomes a norm of choice when we look for a place to sit down for a nice afternoon tea in each city.

Starbucks Reserve, Seattle WA - A New Tourist Spot for Coffee Lovers

I admit; I do like Starbucks.
Portland where I live has a very local-oriented environment where the whole community supports local businesses, and big corporate names like Starbucks in such communities are almost taboo to talk about. I visit different local coffee roasters (like ones from my previous blogs about Roasters in Salem and Portland), and I should almost even never mention the "S" words (I mean Starbucks) in those shops.

But I have to admit that I like coffee from Starbucks, and how they have changed the entire industry of drinking coffee around the world is absolutely amazing and I admire. Their new venture of Starbucks Reserve is surely something more than worth a mention as a coffee lover.

The first Starbucks Reserve store opened in 2011 in UK; the concept of the store is a place where you get to visit the actual roasting facility of Starbucks where you can try their premium coffee roasted right there in front of you. They just opened one in Seattle, WA in December 2014 where their headquarter and the first store is located. I had to visit, and so I did.

Starbucks Reserve, looks like some jewelry store from outside

Starbucks Reserve is located near Seattle's First Starbucks at Pike Place Market. On their website, they make it sounds like it is just blocks from the First Starbucks, but it does take about 15 minutes to walk between; and in the rainy city of Seattle, cab or Uber might be a better options when visiting both (both areas are not an easy spot to find parking lot).

Huge roaster is being displayed nicely inside

Once I step inside, I notice that there are so many... people. I visited right after they opened for the public for the first time, so their entry way was a long line of people waiting to get their coffee.
The store does look amazing; their decor is just nicely and pleasingly done; they have left the rustic taste of old roaster "look" and yet they manage to have a touch of modern feel with shiny pipes running around in the huge open space of 15000 square feet (Their tasting room is 6654 square feet).

They give out freshly roasted beans to customers where we get to smell and touch the warm bean right out of the roaster.

Tank that holds the bean, but it is really a piece of beautiful art.

The whole experience of being right at the roasting process is a visit to remember, and I can assure that many of travel guidebooks will add color pages of this place for Seattle visitors. I can think of many of my coffee freak friends back in Japan who would love to visit this place.
Well, I have to say that they should have thought better for the system for people lining up to get the coffee though. People are just lining up in an open area; it is nice that once in a while a barista brings sample coffee to try out, but that gets quite annoying after waiting for 30 minutes just for a cup of coffee. They should have thought of some system like Disneyland where people can come back in time to ride rather than just standing and waiting.

During the 30 minutes wait, you are presented with "menu" of today's coffee choices where you get to choose which bean you want in your Latte or their selected drinks. Their already heavy labor intensive espresso making is being accented by yet another complex process to add more values and obviously more cost. My premium latte now costs me $7 with 30 minutes wait.

The result? Yes, it does taste wonderful. I felt that the coffee aroma is augmented a lot, and yet has that distinct Starbucks dark roast touch that I like.

Worth the 30 minutes wait? The cup does look premium and nice!

When you are in Seattle, WA, I do recommend a visit to the new Starbucks Reserve, and my only suggestion is that you make sure you have enough time to enjoy the whole experience.