Perfect Coffees.com :: Perfect_CoffeesCom_Newsletter-newsletter3

Perfect Coffees.Com Newsletter Issue #3

We really appreciate you taking the time to subscribe to our newsletter. We hope you get as much enjoyment out of it as we get from writing it.

April 01, 2004

____________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
IN THIS ISSUE
____________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
=> Coffee Facts
=> Feature Article
=> Recipe Of The Month
=> How To Submit A Recipe
=> Coffee Trivia
=> Contact Us
=> Subscribe/Unsubscribe information

_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Coffee Facts
_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Varietals is the term used to describe coffee that comes from a specific geographical region. Like wine, the taste of coffee is also affected by different climates, soils, and cultivation methods.

Coffee grown in South America is medium bodied and mild in acidity.

Coffee grown in Central American has good acidity is medium bodied and has a full aroma.

Hawaii is the only North American coffee produced in commercial quantities and it is a favorite of many coffee drinkers with it's earthy taste and almost sweet aroma.

Other coffees grown in the Pacific are unblended and pure, perfectly balanced, taste sweet and spicy, are low in acidity and full bodied.

Coffees grown in Africa often have a winey flavor, are well balanced in acidity and are medium to full bodied.

The style of coffee refers to how the coffee is actually roasted. These are the most popular roasts.

Light roasts which also consists of Cinnamon or Half City roasts.

Medium roasts which are Full City, American, Regular or Breakfast.

Dark roasts which are Continental, New Orleans or Vienna, which is most of Starbucks roasts.

Darkest roasts which are French, Italian or Espresso, which is a lot of Peets Blends.

_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Feature Article
_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

Chasing Starbucks

How a tea-obsessed hippie sold his business to the world's leading coffee retailer.

To trace the events that transformed Tazo from a small, grassroots company into Starbucks' Coffee's official tea line, one has to go back to the late 1960s when a guy named Steve Smith returned from Vietnam to his hometown of Portland, Ore.

Hippies in tie-dyes hung out in the smoke-filled air of the local java houses. True to the spirit of the local granola culture, Smith tooled around town in a Volkswagen bus and became a manager, and later, co-owner, of a health food store.

It was while Smith was running the shop that his attraction to the ancient history of tea began to brew. Maybe it had something to do with how he went into the Navy "a young man and came back an old one."

By 1972, the former journalism major and a partner had created Stash Tea Company, which also sold botanicals and herbs.

They didn't run it for long. In the fall of 1993, they had a chance to sell Stash to the Japanese tea company Yamamota Yama, and they ran with it.

But Smith didn't leave his passion for tea behind. By 1994, he'd teamed up with Stephen Lee, the former CEO of Stash, and Tom Mesher, a former investor, to create another small company called Tazo: The Reincarnation of Tea using $150,000 from their savings. Smith says he felt destined to "go forth and make a better tea."

"I was bored with what was happening in the market place with teas," he explains. "They were generally English and stuffy. Someone needed to step up and take a stand about the ancient beverage from a discovery perspective. There was such a great opportunity for tea, and no one saw it."

Smith had soon begun blending green, black, and other natural teas into flavors with New-Agey names like Om, Zen, and Awake. Packaging them in boxes decorated with hieroglyphics and slightly embroidered legends about teas, he was on his way to creating a hot product.

"We bet on the fact that people would be interested in hearing about tea in light-hearted way and would pay the price for quality," he says. "We blurred fact and fiction a bit, but didn't mess around with the quality of the blends."

Tapping the contacts he'd made while working at Stash, Smith persuaded a series of corporate food services, restaurants, hotels, natural food stores, and coffee houses to carry Tazo teas.

"I had a reputation in the industry, and I leveraged it as much as I possibly could," he says. With spiritual pursuits like yoga making a resurgence in the late Nineties, consumers didn't seem to mind paying $4.95 for a box of 24 bags of tea.

By the spring of 1998, Tazo was growing so fast that Smith and his partners needed more capital. Smith, who knew Starbucks' chairman and CEO Howard Schultz from his days at Stash, thought the coffee powerhouse would be an ideal investor.

"Our values are similar; theirs were just further along on the path," Smith says. "Our intent was to change the way people thought about tea. We were looking for a strategic partner that could bring something to our team other than money." Schultz also saw an advantage. "Starbucks wanted to return to its roots," says Smith. "It was originally Starbucks Coffee and Tea."

Although Smith hadn't intended to sell Tazo to Starbucks initially, talks with the larger firm's marketing and merchandising teams convinced him that doing so would be the best way to reach new customers.

In January, 1999, Starbucks bought Tazo for $8.1 million. Smith stayed on as senior vice president of creative development, sticking with the responsibilities he's always enjoyed most: packaging, products, buying tea and overseeing production.

With Tazo teas now selling in all Starbucks' outlets, Smith has been able to give Tazo's 30 employees a financial stake in the company for the first time. Employees receive "Leaf Stock" -- shares in Tazo which can be redeemed for Starbucks stock.

"That's something we've never been able to do before," he says. "Everyone from the receptionist to the person who drives the forklift has a piece of this company. It's a wonderful thing to make great products, create opportunities for employees, and still love what you do."

This article is an excerpt from Fortune Magazine and was written by June Avignone.

_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Recipe Of The Month
_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Perfect Brownies

Ingredients
4 - 1 oz. squares unsweetened chocolate
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup sifted enriched flour

Instructions.
Melt chocolate and butter on stove. Let cool a few minutes, add sugar, eggs, vanilla and then flour. Mix well. Pour batter into greased 8X12X2 inch pan. Bake in slow oven (325 degrees) for 35 minutes. Test with toothpick in middle; should come out dry.

FROSTING

1/2 of a 1-ounce square unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
Confectioners sugar
milk

Melt chocolate and butter on low stove. While still on stove add some sugar and mix with whisk, add dash of milk and vanilla, then more sugar, and more milk, etc. … until texture you want and amount you want. Pour onto brownies, let harden.

_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Coffee Trivia
_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
57% of coffee is consumed at breakfast; 34% between meals and 13% at other meals.

People who buy coffee primarily at drive through windows on their way to work will spend as much as 45 hours a year waiting in line.

Coffee is actually a fruit.

Abraham Lincoln seldom had anything more than a cup of coffee for breakfast.

Bach wrote a coffee cantata in 1732.

Italians do not drink espresso during meals. It is considered to be a separate event and is given its own time.

Raw coffee beans, soaked in water and spices, are chewed like candy in many parts of Africa.

For reducing wrinkles and improving their skin, the Japanese have been known to bathe in coffee grounds fermented with pineapple pulp.

In the year 1809, Meslitta Bentz made a filter out of her son's notebook paper, thus inventing the world's first drip coffee maker.

The average annual coffee consumption of the American adult is 26.7 gallons, or over 400 cups.

Starbucks is opening coffee shops at the rate of about 3 1/2 a day worldwide.

_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Contact Us
_________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
If you have comments or questions about our web sites or coffee newsletter we would love to hear from you. Your opinion is more than just important. To us it is everything.

Our contact email is Comments@perfectcoffees.com

Thanks for reading and subscribing to our newsletter.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Webmaster: Gary Gresham

Website: Perfect Coffees.Com

Newsletter Subscription Page:
Perfect Coffees.Com Newsletter
-------------------------------------------------------------------------