Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee

Editorial: Current Affairs: Today's Must-read

I couldn't resist clicking on this article with a headline like "Baby Boomers have led us into fiscal and moral bankruptcy"!

Editorial: The F-bomb

I just ran an errand over at UWM. In the hallway, a few students sitting around a Kaplan information table (not sure if they were working) were dropping F-bombs like Patriot missiles on Baghdad both times I passed through. I have an irrational hatred of this word. Fair warning: if anyone who deals with me professionally ever drops the F-bomb in my presence, they (and, where applicable, their employer) will hear about it. I'm always up for a Don Quixote-like task, so I think I'm going to start taking a stand against incivility.

Editorial: In the Tank?

I've struggled with the issue of how to appear as objective as possible on this site.  I think my opinions over the last year and a half, and the wide variety of opinions reflected in them, roughly correspond to Milwaukee reality.  Though I've never been confronted with this accusation, I'd imagine I appear to be "in the tank" for Alterra.  I believe there are more or less measurable benchmarks I can apply that would give Alterra a decisive advantage.  To my mind, "espresso quality" is an objective reality, but even if we postulate that it isn't, here are some things that have never happened to me at an Alterra:

1) The counter person has never engaged in lengthy conversation with the person ahead of me in line that delayed my turn.

2) Rudeness.  I'm scouring my memory to even find an instance of curt or indifferent service.  I think in *2002*, an employee at the Lakefront location greeted me at the door at 9:55 p.m. or thereabouts with "You know, we close in five minutes" or something to that effect.  That's pretty much just a variation on the ol' "Just so you know, we close in fifteen minutes" or whatever.  I can't remember the last time I heard the "Just so you know" at an Alterra, or even an announcement right at closing time.  (I think they just cut the music and turn off the lights, or some other oh-so-subtle hint.)

These are just a couple measurable benchmarks that any business is able to copy and implement.  If they do, I promise I'll be there--and I ask for the help of my loyal readers in letting me know.  Until then, I'm going to let the chips fall where they may.

Editorial: Menomonee Valley

While taking a long walk through the Menomonee Valley from the west towards Downtown, I gained mixed feelings towards the current revitalization efforts. Although the publicity gives me hope that more people will walk or drive there and see it for themselves, I would be sad to see most or all of the abandoned industrial buildings razed. I feel that their continued presence—in stark contrast to the multi-billion dollar entertainment and gambling facility just a few blocks away—tells a powerful story of a city and society gone wrong. Where once industry created wealth, gambling now sucks it out from those who can least afford to lose it. Despite the facility’s attempt to market itself as an upscale place catering to the black-tie crowd, I have never heard an “upscale” person speak of going there. Rather, I have only heard such talk from people in marginalized elements of society, toiling away at minimum-wage jobs. The facility’s high-profile charitable efforts and endless self-promotion in this regard are similar to those of Wal-Mart, the chief pillar of the poverty industry. While the businesses that remain in the Valley, such as Miller Compressing, are not glamorous (its giant-ball-o’-aluminum statue will surely never be a tourist attraction), they provide real jobs with real pay to real people. The Valley’s forge and smelter fires, and the industry and wealth they represent, burn brighter than any other. 

Editorial: Just Say No to the American Blandscape

Today, a brief, though painful experience at CVS made me resolve to give up American Blandscape experiences. You are the director of your life. What do you want the set to be?

Our creator has communicated to us a vivid sense of space.  "Come to the sanctuary," we read in 2 Chronicles 30:8.  Before heading out the door this morning, I thought to open my Bible to some random page and see what I would find.  I'm amazed (perhaps more than I should be) by the fact that you can do that and never fail to find something relevant.

Editorial: Diversity

Nancy Ketchman, a thoughtful reader, submitted this inquiry:

I wanted to add to your list of RIP coffee shops.  Did you ever go to Beanhead Cafe on MLK Jr.?  It opened about 4 or 5 years ago to much excitement in the Brewers Hill neighborhood.  It was in a remodelled, historic building (former site of a tea shop).  It had a great vibe to it, cool music, and was racially and economically diverse crowd (which, as you no doubt have observed, is very rare in coffee shops around Milwaukee).  Many people I know visited Beanhead with great expectations.  Unfortunately, the service itself and the coffee was not so great.  Beanhead was closed when it was supposed to be open, took forever just to get your order, and they charged a lot for substandard food (e.g. storebought cookies as in from Pick n Save brought in!!). Sadly but not unexpectedly, they closed within a year or so.  It was so sad 'cuz it was a very cool space and -- had the service and quality and prices been at least average -- would have thrived.  Sigh. 

 

Here's my question to you:  which coffee shop, in your opinion, comes as close as possible to Beanhead in terms of racial and economic diversity?   

My response: tough one.  I have to try not to reply with my instinctive response, as I don't drive across town to visit different coffeehouses, nor do I ever really find myself "just in the neighborhood".  There are pretty much ruts in the road (or hiking trail) between my apartment, my office, and the various East Side/Riverwest/Bayshore area coffee shops.

Editorial: Convenience Stores

It is time for us to see the relationship between the high prices at the gas pump and what’s on the shelves of the convenience store inside. Convenience stores represent the kind of thoughtless consumption that has been made possible by cheap fuel. Their supply chains transport large amounts of soda and weak beer—both of which are mostly water—by truck. They assemble sandwiches and snacks for sale in single-serving packages whose weight and cost seems equal to the small portions of food they contain. Not only must these supplies be trucked to the store, at some point they will also end up in the garbage stream to again be hauled by truck. In the coming years, environmentally aware citizens will look to convenience store operators such as Open Pantry to provide reusable containers, options for recycling (at least for the packaging materials of their products), minimized packaging, and the opportunity to have a quick snack or cup of coffee on-site using reusable tableware. If, as some predict, gas prices hit $5 a gallon, even those who are indifferent to the environment will likely begin to wonder how much gas is being squandered on trucking packaging materials and garbage. Americans have the choice of either gradually raising our consciousness and acting more wisely, or facing major disruption—if not hardship—in the future.

Editorial: Dying Old Media Outlet Fabricates Coffee Story

Somehow I'd missed this story: the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently published a Public Investigator story about 20-ounce coffee drinks not being filled to the brim.  This just confirms my thinking that all dead-tree media are right at home on my "life's too short" list.  The story is quite possibly the worst piece of fabricated bullsh*t I've ever seen in my life.  For those who need it, here's a little Consumer Awareness 101: weights and measures are regulated by the government in what are called penny profit businesses, such as food and gasoline retailing.  That's why government-issued seals appear on grocery store scales and gas pumps.  When you are making a few cents profit on a sale, there is a financial incentive to short the customer to eke out a few cents more.  I hate to break this to you, but specialty coffee is not a penny profit business.  It's an insane profit business; we are talking literally ninety cents on the dollar or more in some cases.  That's why the businesses can do such low volume and survive.

A specialty coffee business has no incentive to short you two ounces on a 20-ounce drink.  Any short-term financial gain would be negligible and completely overshadowed by loss of customer goodwill.  I write this with more confidence than anything I've ever written on this blog.

I've always had the nagging feeling that reading the JS not only doesn't make me any smarter, it actually makes me dumber.  I think I understand better why: kind of like sugary junk food that saps nutrients from your body, junk reading saps common sense and wisdom from your mind.  Just say no!

Editorial: More Drip Coffee Thoughts

I realize this discussion has taken place haphazardly over multiple posts, so I'll re-edit it and archive the polished version when I am less busy, hopefully this weekend.  In the early 1990s, Milwaukee was an unsophisticated coffee market, myself certainly included.  We were still used to flavored coffees from Gloria Jean's.  When the true specialty coffee outlets began to open, a dark roast seemed the most different from what we were used to (Folger's or whatever).  Starbucks was correct to use the dark roast as the platform on which to build their global success, and the local roasters who adopted a Starbucks-like roast were correct to do so at the time.  I'd argue that by the late 1990s, consumers were sated with the dark roasts and started to simply accept this as the baseline (even my parents started brewing dark-roasted Eight O'Clock around this time).  Personally, it was around this time that I stopped paying much attention to drip coffee.

I've taken inventory of my memories of the past decade, and to be honest, the next distinctive thing I remember about drip coffee is in early 2007, brewing up a pot of Caribou, who quite often roast lighter than Alterra ever does, not to mention Stone Creek.  Obtaining light-roasted coffee from a home roaster shortly thereafter blew the lid off of what I knew as coffee up to that point.

To make a long story short, time is in no way the friend of a specialty coffee business, unless it has money in the bank earning interest.  In 2008, Milwaukee consumers have been to Intelligentsia. . .have had Alterra espresso. . .have been to Roast and the other third-wave shops in Milwaukee (if there are any).  It's no longer possible to pull one over on them by over-roasting crap beans.  (I, too, used to superstitiously associate roast level with quality.)  Starbucks realized too late that the formula wasn't working any more, but it did change course.  I'd argue that the only way to serve the customer something he or she isn't getting at home is to brew each cup fresh.  To not only not go that route, but to roast dark and then to let the coffee sit too long is a double poison.  Dark-roasted drip coffee is much less forgiving of long hold times.  Frankly, Alterra sometimes holds coffee too long also, but its lighter roasts mean that the worst it gets is meh-ish or just a hair south of that.  Unfortunately, experiences at other local roasters have tended to be far more unpleasant.

Editorial: More Constructive, Nice, Constructive. . .

I'd like to return to the drip coffee discussion.  In the early to mid-1990s, good drip coffee was still a novelty.  Most people were still drinking canned commercial coffee, perhaps even brewed with a percolator.  I imagine that as the 1990s waned, more people were drinking coffee that was at least acceptable if not necessarily specialty (say, Eight O'Clock).  This is probably around the time Starbucks launched the Frappuccino.