Coffee snobs unite! How Americans' bad taste in coffee is putting Juan Valdez out of business

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2003 by Joshua Kurlantzick

But if the goal is to wean the market from robusta and force it to buy more arabica, the real battle for Third World growers may lie in the food aisles of Middle America, and may hinge on whether mainstream coffee drinkers are willing to demand a better tasting product than they've been getting from Folgers, Maxwell House, and the other cheap brands. There's a certain culture gap at work here. Mainstream, robusta-based stuff makes the face of a good coffee snob seize up with distaste, but provides what the average coffee drinker needs: a quick rush of caffeine and a familiar taste. In the long run, as the proportion of the coffee-drinking population reared on Starbucks' grows, it may be nearly inevitable that mainstream coffee drinkers demand better joe. In the short run, while most Americans are perfectly happy with the cheaper stuff, it might not be so easy.

JOSHUA KURLANTZICK is the foreign editor of The New Republic.