Small Business Trends: Awards… That Aren’t, Really

Yay for us!

Twice in the past two weeks, we have been “honored” with small business “awards”.

One was for having an excellent blog.  Among the “Top 30″ coffee blogs, in fact, according to the award givers.  I mean, wow, I do work hard at the blog, but knock me over with a feather, right?

Not so fast.  In order to “claim” my award, I needed to agree to a link exchange, i.e., I post a link to their site on mine, in exchange for… what, exactly?  Maybe a link from their site?  A well written survey of all the coffee blogs out there?  No, not so much.  Turns out their site is basically just “Pimp my MBA Program”, an extraordinarily shallow promotion of MBA programs around the world.  Their site doesn’t even mention coffee.  Or blogs.  And if I didn’t agree to a link exchange within a short period of time, well, they were going to have to give my award to somebody else.  Somebody who also had the #8 coffee blog, apparently.  Man, I haven’t felt that deflated since my kids gave me the “#1 Dad” hat and I realized somebody else had one just like it.

Then yesterday, we learned that we had also been recognized with a prestigious customer service award.  Yeah man.  We do work hard at customer service.  All we had to do to claim our award was to purchase a small plaque.  For $195.  Plus $18 shipping.  Seriously?

First of all, shame on these idiots.  This is really the most productive use of your time – cooking up bogus “awards” to sell to small businesses desperate enough to decorate their walls with worthless business bling?  When your momma asks you what you do for a living, this is what you want to tell her?  “Gee, Momma, I make up phony awards to sell to fools that think they can trick people into believing they do a good job and lots of folks like them.”  Yeah, that’ll make her proud.

And shame on any business that propagates this sham.  Next time you see a small business displaying a seemingly prestigious “award”, maybe you should ask what they did to earn it.  And whether it came without strings attached.

As for us, we’ll just keep on blogging, and serving customers.  Because our award is the feedback we get from you.  Thanks, and keep it coming!

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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Fire in the Hole!

<Read this post in your best Anthony Bourdain voice and I promise you it will sound better>

Tonight I made my first fired tea.  In several batches.  It was harder than I thought it would be, and it didn’t come out exactly right each time.  In fact, it came out exactly right only once, curiously enough the first time I tried.  My shop smelled like a 1970′s Pink Floyd concert.  But it worked.  And thus begins another life-long obsession, I suspect.

What is fired tea, you ask?  It’s green tea, roasted.  The one that got me started on this is hojicha, a tea I first tried while Japan.  Hojicha, the traditionally charcoal-fired version of bancha, or second blush of sencha, sounds like a romantic, artisan creation.  And it is.  But in that uniquely Japanese way, it is also eminently practical.

You see, bancha is an inferior tea.  The first of seasonal green tea is called sencha, and it is universally prized around the world.  After the branches are bare, the second push arrives, and is harvested.  This ugly duckling of a tea, coarse and twiggy, is called bancha.  If bancha were coffee, it would be Vietnamese robusta.  Yuck.   So in true Japanese fashion, they take something undesirable, and turn it into something prized.  With fire.  Hojicha.

Sencha

Bancha. This is actually the best looking bancha I've ever seen; it looks better than some sencha. I wouldn't fire anything that looked this good. Well, OK, maybe I would. Fire, heh heh.

It’s understandable why the Japanese were driven to do this.  Any of you who have been to Japan know that real estate is at a premium.  They can’t just farm more land and harvest more sencha to make enough to earn a living.  No, they need to utilize the land to its fullest.  And hojicha is one way of doing that.  Hoji magically transforms the rough and relatively flavorless bancha into a beautiful, less astringent tea, with lovely grain and cereal flavors.  It’s just short of miraculous, really.

Hojicha. This one is a little twiggy.

So once again, I had the distinct advantage of knowing just enough to be dangerous, and not nearly enough to be useful.  If there’s one thing I can do, I figured, it’s roast.  And roast I did.  How hot?  How long?  How much air?  How much agitation?  All complete mysteries to me.  And they pretty much still are.  But I got it right once, and that was all it took.  I am hooked.

It turns out that hojicha is usually pan fired over charcoal.  In retrospect, I can clearly see the wisdom of this technique.  As you might have guessed, that’s not exactly what I did.  What I did… is to remain a secret.  Why? Well, the obvious reason is proprietary competitive advantage.  And that’s true, to a certain extent.  But the real reason is embarrassment.  I know I looked like Rube Goldberg, but with enough BTUs to torch a house.  What I did tonight was dangerous and silly.  And fun.  And unexpectedly productive.  And my secret.

I would offer you some of my hoji to try, but the batch I got right yielded just enough for a few servings.  I sent what was left after my sampling to a friend in Atlanta with his coffee order.  I look forward, as always, to his sometimes harsh, but always honest feedback.  I suspect he will encourage me to continue.

And as I research the field, I realize that hojicha is but one type of fired tea.  People have been doing this to all kinds of beverages for a very long time.  Looks like I have some catching up to do.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

WWJD (What Would Jim Drink today?): Hoji!  I drank all of the batch that worked, now I’m working on some of the less perfect batches, and they’re still good.

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Topless Coffee?

I usually try to avoid the sensational.  Things like “Nescafe Turned My Child Into a Wolfboy!”, or “Starbucks Bankrupted My Family” (OK, that could happen).  But this one is just too bizarre not to mention; from the We Report, You Decide people:

Topless Coffee Shop Proposed for Small Maine Town

I can’t even think what to say about this.  Except, maybe, I wonder where they get their coffee?  Somehow I don’t think this one is consistent with our Brand Promise.

Thanks to Steve for alerting us to this important, breaking news!

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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Important Stuff: How to Drink Coffee in Zero Gravity

My wife tells me that I become more like my father with every passing day – a veritable font of useless information (Think Cliff on Cheers).  But if ever find yourself in zero gravity, you’ll be glad you watched this:

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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The Starbucks Theory of International Economics

I just came across an interesting piece on Slate’s website that is a variation of Freidman’s McDonald’s Theory of international relations.  For those who didn’t read The Lexus and Olive Tree, Friedman made the observation that no two countries that both have McDonalds have gone to war with each other (at least since they got the McDonalds).  Daniel Gross at Slate has an interesting observation, too – that countries with large numbers of Starbucks are getting creamed the hardest in the current economic meltdown.  Neither rule is iron clad, but generally both are good indicators.  Read the piece at Slate if you have the time.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

WWJD (What Would Jim Drink today?): Some light roasted Peru Piura FTO.  I was just in the mood for some zip and varietal nuance.  I’m also working on a new blend and was experimenting with that, too… stay tuned.

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Who Has Time For a Cup of Coffee?

I just saw this one for the first time today.  I would give attribution to the author, but as it turns out this one is all over the internet.  If you haven’t seen it already, it’s worth a read, especially in these troubled times…

The Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee

When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full.  They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things–your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions–and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else–the small stuff. “If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your  spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first–the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

WWJD (What Would Jim Drink today?):  Organic Old North State blend.  This blend is a PITA to do.  Truly, it is.  But we had a BIG order for it this week.  Our biggest single order ever, in fact.  Turns out that BIG is the best way to do this blend.  It is a melange, meaning a mix of multiple roast levels.  In small quantities, it is harder to get a good demarcation between roast levels, but at scale I have a much easier time getting each different roast level to come out *exactly* where I want it.  I was also using new sacks of current crop, so this batch is the best I’ve ever done on this blend.  That’s right, I think this batch beats the one that scored 91 points at Coffee Review.  Give me a holler back if you would like to try some of this lot, I have a few bags on hand that will be gone by the weekend.

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The Muddy Dog is a Dudley

I had never heard of it, either.

I was looking at Google analytics for our site, and saw that we had a number of hits from this link.  This was the first I had ever heard the term Dudley lab.

Bailey, aka Muddy Dog (please don't tell Cary people about her Flamingo)

Turns out that Bailey dog is unusual as Labradors go (we knew that, but I mean physically).  I had never noticed, but most yellow labs have black pigmented noses, and pigment around the eyes.  Ours is liver-colored, putting her in a rare class of labs known as “Dudley labs”.  This is about the best description I found.  It’s funny, I go back with her line to the early 80′s, and I can’t recall specifically if any of the other dogs in her lineage were like her.

There doesn’t appear to be any correlation to poor health, or any other problems.  It just disqualifies her as a standard of the breed. As if…

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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Wolfgang Puck – Entrepreneurial Genius, AND Coffee Wh…

Rhymes with CHORE. In fact, shares the same last four letters.

I went to Spago when it was the hottest thing going, when it met my guiding restaurant selection criteria of “there can’t be more that one”. Was that 20 years or so ago? It was spectacular then. I wondered about old Wolf when I saw the proliferation of WP Express in airports around the country. It seemed to me that the celebrity chef was probably selling out by putting his well-known likeness on substandard food offerings. All food venues in RDU airport are served by the same contractor, i.e., the sandwich you buy in WP’s is the same as Starbuck’s, is the same as Hudson News. etc.

Well, Wolf has sunk to a new low. Seems he’s now in the coffee business (click HERE then look at coffee) – yeah, right. At a hotel I stayed in this week, my room was graced by a shitty ten-dollar pod coffee maker,

WP Coffee Maker - You Gotta Be Kidding

bearing the likeness of none other that the photogenic chef himself. The hermetically sealed pod claimed to contain a “Sumatra Estate Coffee”. The accompanying blurb was priceless, “Wolfgang’s own recipe…” Since when is there a “recipe” for an Estate coffee?? What shameless pandering to underinformed audiences. How does he sleep at night?

I couldn’t bring myself to actually try it – no need. Pathetic.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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Winning Search Strings

For those new to the game, one of the great analytical tools available is a list of the search strings people use to find your site. Some of them are perfectly logical, and others are quite amusing. Here’s the latest winners:

“roasted dogs” – why?

“french word for sadness” – that would be WORK

“another word for good” – once again, COFFEE

“how to arbitrage vegetables” – great idea, one that only you and millions of other farmers have had over hundreds of years.

I’ll post ‘em as they come in.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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Starbucks Pins Its Hopes on a new blend

So the big news really was just a new blend. Being a blender myself, I don’t want to minimize the difficulty or importance of a good blend; our Old North State has become pretty popular in these parts. But I thought they got a little carried away in the press release calling the Pike Place Blend “historic”. Please. Does it seem reasonable to you that the turnaround of the stock price can be achieved by one new “everyday” blend? I think short positions in SBUX are in order, personally.

I remember being inspired by Howard Shultz’ 1997 book, Pour Your Heart Into It. The entire premise of the company, it seemed, was based on bringing the Italian coffee culture to the US. And for a long time, despite burnt roasts, they did it. They educated America.

But the Italian coffee culture is based on espresso. How is the Pike Place Blend going to rekindle the magic? Seems unlikely that some Dunkin Donuts like coffee is going to do it.

No, I think it’s more likely that they just outgrew their mission, which was a worthy mission. But not all of America is going to embrace the Italian coffee culture, so by default there was an upper limit to the growth. Now they need to turn into something new. Something less special, to match the American coffee culture. Which, on the whole, is just less special.

Although I must say that I like the return to the old logo.

http://www.muddydogcoffee.com

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