Credit Cards working again

Authorize.net seems to be up again, so go ahead and fill your cart with reckless abandon.

I’m not sure whether to expect any residual SNAFUs, so we’ll leave the warnings up on the site for now.

Thanks for your patience.

Authorize.Net Down Due to Fire – No Credit Card Processing

A few hours ago, a fire disrupted operations at Authorize.net, our credit card gateway provider.  Essentially, they are one of two interfaces between your credit card and our bank account.

The net effect for you is that you cannot conduct credit card transactions on our site right now.  They currently have no ETA on restoration of service.

Obviously this impacts other eCommerce merchants, too.  Authorize.net seems (to me) to be among the most popular gateway providers on the internet, so I would anticipate problems with much online shopping today.

You can follow Authorize.Net’s updates on twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/authorizenet

Here’s some online news about the fire:

http://tr.im/qMFX

For the other six people who care, Mother Jones’ servers were victims to the fire at the Fisher Plaza in Seattle.  So don’t plan on reading Mother Jones online while you wait to be able to internet shop again.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

More than half the world reads this blog

Normally that kind of claim would be viewed with skepticism.  Especially by me.  But it’s true – from a country persepctive, anyhow.

I just logged on to see visitor statistics for the first time in a very long time.  What I saw surprised me.

This blog has visitors from 116 countries.  Two or more from each country (if I counted countries with just one visit, total would be 117).

According to About.com, there are 195 countries in the world.  Give or take.

That means that 60% of the countries in the world have logged on to this blog.

Flattering?  Pathetic?  I’m not sure.

But thanks for stopping by.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

The Ten Commandments of Grits

The 10 Commandments of Grits:

1    Thou shalt not put syrup on thy Grits

2    Thou shalt not eat thy Grits with a spoon or knife

3    Thou shalt not eat Cream of Wheat and call it Grits, for this is blasphemy

4    Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors Grits

5    Thou shalt use only Salt, Butter, and red eye gravy as toppings for thy Grits

6    Thou shalt not eat Instant Grits

7    Thou shalt not put ketchup on thy Grits

8    Thou shalt not put margarine on thy Grits.

9    Thou shalt not eat toast with thy Grits, only biscuits made from scratch .

10    Thou shalt eat grits on the Sabbath for this is manna from heaven.

REDNECK BLESSING BEFORE EATING GRITS

May the Lord bless these grits,

May no Yankee ever get the recipe,

May I eat grits every day while living,

And may I die while eating grits.

AMEN

We now have both white and yellow grits in stock.  Buy them HERE (if you want yellow, say so in the comments at checkout, I haven’t gotten around to adding a drop box selector to the website).  Ron and I have been talking about some interesting experiments; I think we are just about done talking and just about ready to start DOING, so stay tuned.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

Show Your Farmers’ Market the Love, Help ‘em Win 5 Grand

Local Harvest is sponsoring a national contest – vote for your favorite market, the one with the most votes gets FIVE THOUSAND bucks!

Interesting that two of the top 10 vote getters right now are Triangle-area markets.  Not surprising for a region voted “America’s Foodiest Small Town”

You can vote for your favorite market by clicking HERE.

http://www.muddydogocffee.com

Is It Tea? Or Is It Coffee?

We heard some interesting feedback at the Duke University farmers’ market today.  More than one customer, independently of each other, tasted our sweet tea made with the beautiful Sewpur Estate Assam black tea, and offered the following observation… “tastes like coffee”.

Since I was not at the market, this message was relayed to me this afternoon, with some concern about my competence and attention to detail.  After all, it was Yours Truly who made the tea.

I had cleaned the brewer thoughly before brewing it (yes, I use the coffee brewer to brew black teas in large batches).  I cleaned the urns.  All the utensils.  The countertop.  Even the scales.  So I was puzzled.

With great trepidation, I just tasted the offending tea.  And since it is a cold sweet tea, I even heated some up to see if temperature made a difference in the volatiles.  You know what I tasted?

Tea.  Just tea.  No coffee.

Just to be sure, I had my teenagers taste it.  They have highly sensitive and pretty sophisticated palettes.  And they don’t like coffee.  If there was one part per million of caffeol (the water-soluble substance that gives coffee its aroma and flavor) in that brew, they would be all over it.  You know what they said?  “Good tea.”

That rich, complex flavor the customers were talking about?  The malty, slightly floral, beautifully nuanced beverage, with a fairly full mouthfeel?  It’s called TEA.

I don’t say this to be some kind of smart-alec.  Part of me wanted the complaints to be correct, because that would be easy to fix.  The problem, I realize now, is that too many people have never actually tasted a really GOOD tea (and for that matter, if they thought the tea tasted like coffee, they’re not drinking good coffee, either).  One with rich, full flavors that compel you to taste it over and over, because you get a new experience with each mouthful.  One that’s lovingly grown, carefully fermented, skillfully sourced and thoughtfully brewed.  One that’s treated like a beautiful, seasonal agricultural product, which, of course, it is.  That stuff chopped up in bags you buy in the supermarket?  It bears a passing resemblance to tea, but is no substitute for the real deal.

So if you were one of those customers who thought the tea tasted like coffee today (or any other customer, for that matter) – I invite you to contact me to arrange a private or semi-private tasting.  I would be thrilled to have you cup teas and coffees of the world with me to show you what you’ve been missing.  Please give me a call, seriously.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

Our First Twitter Contest Winner

Last night we had an impromptu contest on Twitter – be our 700th internet order before midnight, and mention the Tweet, and your order (up to $50) is FREE.  It was cool to see people responding, and trying to be that 700th order.

The winner was Steve, one of our customers from Duke University.  He was the lucky recipient of a voided credit card transaction this morning.

I think we’ll be doing more things like this in the future.  If you have ideas for contests or promotions, please leave a comment!

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

We’re Back on Top – Alltop, that is

We disappeared for a couple weeks, now we’re back.  The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy appears to apply to this little maneuver.  They do send us some traffic, so we’re happy to be back.  I’ll get around to putting up their badge with the other widgets; I deleted it when they deleted me.

Check ‘em out, it is a neat idea.  http://www.alltop.com

Coffee Catering

This idea came to me recently, but I’m not sure if it’s even worth bothering, so I’m looking for some feedback.

Here’s the basic premise:  For your event, we will provide 2.5 liter pump pots (about 12 good-sized cups) of whatever kind of coffee you would like.  Might be one, might be multiples.  For talking purposes, figure the cost would be about $10 per pump pot; obviously a little more for things like Kona.

Here’s the advantages for you:

• You don’t have to worry about making great coffee – we will brew it for you to SCAA Gold Cup standards.
• You can have variety, without buying several types of beans
• We will serve the best decaf you have ever tasted
• No coffee cleanup – pickup (or have us deliver) full pots, return them when you are done, we’ll worry about the cleaning.
• Economical – if you have several coffees, having us brew a pot of each will be less expensive than buying several kinds of beans.

I’m also toying with the idea of espresso catering, where I could bring a professional espresso machine to your home (one that’s been modified to run on standard house wiring, and does not require a plumbing connection).  It could come with or without a barista.  Without barista would be a standard fee (let’s say $50), with barista would be maybe $150 for a several hour event.  At that rate I probably wouldn’t bother with per-drink charges.

Of course I could add teas to any of the options above.

Please let me know what you think of this idea.  Stupid?  Brilliant?  What price point makes it appealing?  Please leave some comments.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

New Half Caf on the Menu – Organic Mexico

This is a coffee that I’ve been offering for a while, and just had a local customer point out that I never put it on the web site.  Bottom line on this one is that it’s one of those classic crowd-pleaser coffees, smooth and balanced, but with enough body, flavor and nuance to be interesting.  It’s all organic and half Fair Trade Certified inputs.

The full details can be found HERE.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com