A Record-Demolishing $49.75 a Pound
By Richard Eriksson on January 18, 2006 - 11:54pm
Kellan points out a Brazilian coffee auction in which a local chain made off with some premium blends:
Huddled around the laptop Tuesday morning we watched as the price climbed high enough to shake the resolve of many members of our buying group. When the digital smoke cleared, the last bidder standing was the coalition of Australia’s Instaurator and Vince Piccolo of Vancouver’s Caffè Artigiano paying a record-demolishing $49.75 a pound (about $79,000 for the 12 bags).auction action
The Globe & Mail article (registration and/or separation of money from your wallet required) cited in the above link quotes the president of Caffè Artigiano as, noting the price of the cups of coffee as a result of the above purchase being about $5 per cup, saying "We want to differentiate ourselves from the competition by being able to offer our customers the option to buy the best coffee in the world." I wonder if he meant "We want to differentiate ourselves from the competition by charging twice as much as they do." Who am I to criticize people who want to buy over-priced regular coffee, when I drink over-priced fancy coffee during weekdays. I'll leave it to One for the annals of the experts in the field to comment on the hefty sum spent on Brazilian beans.
As Boris notes in the comments to Kellan's post, Caffè Artigiano probably competes well on coffee quality, but if comfort and Internet access are the differentiating factors, then Take 5 Cafe, which recently expanded their hours on weeknights and Saturdays, currently leads the way.
Thanks for the link, but we aren't really experts, more like interested consumers trying to learn more about coffee and its industry ;)
But I did a search for "vancouver coffee" in Google, and your site came up as #1, so I just assumed...
I'm only half-kidding, since I've met and talked with you and Arieanna a few times, so I knew about the site before looking up how highly you were ranked. So that's what I was referring to, that since the search engine ranking conferred authority on the site and therefore the site's authors (and besides, I'm confident you know more about coffee than I ever will), it seemed appropriate to call you "experts". :)
Yeah, my comment was tongue-in-cheek. It's just that I know of some people who will get their panties in a knot if they see anyone calling us experts.