Good question posed here, Dusty. I’m not sure where the answer ultimately lies, but here are some thoughts.
Group Think v/s Competition: I think that with specialty coffee being such a small and relatively young industry, we find ourselves in a position that almost every industry has been in during their inception – of needing to band together to some degree and pool resources, even if only in a loose, relational way, in order to bring to the consumer consciousness that as a product, we are different – qualitatively different on a scale akin to the difference between go-carts and sports cars or between acoustic and electric music. Overall, I believe that specialty coffee may be in its infancy and just now learning to walk. For this reason, we seem to adopt common messages and do a whole lot of cross-promotion that, at first, may seem counter-productive to one’s own financial success. Were we in a much more established and fleshed-out industry, that would probably be true, and the time will come when that balance of public awareness of specialty coffee hits the tipping point and becomes more of a standard in peoples’ budgets and lifestyles. When that happens, there may need to be some changes in this regard. I just hope that when that time comes, we, the individuals of the industry, can guard and maintain our relationships and fraternity among one another while appropriately changing our practical business tactics.
At the same time, I think that there is still a very healthy base of competition that exists. I certainly do not tell all my friends in the industry everything that I am working on, but I do have a few trusted confidants that I bounce ideas and questions off of. If we could be flies on the walls of company offices throughout truly specialty coffee, I think we would hear a shocking number of ideas and battle plans of such an ambitious nature that none of us have yet caught wind of.
For now, though, I think that there is a pretty appropriate balance of competition and cooperation going on. One such occurrence is the co-oped resources that are going towards creating a study and research team for the specific use of the specialty coffee industry. Peter G of Counter Culture Coffee told us a little bit about it (you can go back and watch the dirtyCup video “Peter G tells a Secret” to hear it) and so far, Counter Culture, Intelli, Tony’s, Sweet Maria’s, a a few others are involved in making this research happen with a focus on specialty coffee which has never happened before – the Big Four have been doing this as part of their own industry and market research for decades, but all of those studies have been focused on issues pertaining directly to commodity coffee and are not very relevant to specialty coffee. I am frankly surprised that so little has been said publicly about this project as I believe that it has the potential to be a game-changer, even revolutionary for our industry.
Enough rambling. Thanks again, Dusty – great to have you at the shop for a day. ~ Hunt
One Comment
Good question posed here, Dusty. I’m not sure where the answer ultimately lies, but here are some thoughts.
Group Think v/s Competition: I think that with specialty coffee being such a small and relatively young industry, we find ourselves in a position that almost every industry has been in during their inception – of needing to band together to some degree and pool resources, even if only in a loose, relational way, in order to bring to the consumer consciousness that as a product, we are different – qualitatively different on a scale akin to the difference between go-carts and sports cars or between acoustic and electric music. Overall, I believe that specialty coffee may be in its infancy and just now learning to walk. For this reason, we seem to adopt common messages and do a whole lot of cross-promotion that, at first, may seem counter-productive to one’s own financial success. Were we in a much more established and fleshed-out industry, that would probably be true, and the time will come when that balance of public awareness of specialty coffee hits the tipping point and becomes more of a standard in peoples’ budgets and lifestyles. When that happens, there may need to be some changes in this regard. I just hope that when that time comes, we, the individuals of the industry, can guard and maintain our relationships and fraternity among one another while appropriately changing our practical business tactics.
At the same time, I think that there is still a very healthy base of competition that exists. I certainly do not tell all my friends in the industry everything that I am working on, but I do have a few trusted confidants that I bounce ideas and questions off of. If we could be flies on the walls of company offices throughout truly specialty coffee, I think we would hear a shocking number of ideas and battle plans of such an ambitious nature that none of us have yet caught wind of.
For now, though, I think that there is a pretty appropriate balance of competition and cooperation going on. One such occurrence is the co-oped resources that are going towards creating a study and research team for the specific use of the specialty coffee industry. Peter G of Counter Culture Coffee told us a little bit about it (you can go back and watch the dirtyCup video “Peter G tells a Secret” to hear it) and so far, Counter Culture, Intelli, Tony’s, Sweet Maria’s, a a few others are involved in making this research happen with a focus on specialty coffee which has never happened before – the Big Four have been doing this as part of their own industry and market research for decades, but all of those studies have been focused on issues pertaining directly to commodity coffee and are not very relevant to specialty coffee. I am frankly surprised that so little has been said publicly about this project as I believe that it has the potential to be a game-changer, even revolutionary for our industry.
Enough rambling. Thanks again, Dusty – great to have you at the shop for a day. ~ Hunt