A Cup of Mediocrity, Sir?

So weak you can see the flag at the bottom

We Americans do breakfast better than just about anybody, except maybe the Brits, with one exception. Our coffee.

Sure, while a brown, watery, mildly bitter bladder-full is part of many American’s morning, it fails in so many ways to live up to its potential.

Like many Americans, I take a dose of caffeine in the morning. But my loyalty goes to PG Tips or Black Irish.

Yes, I’m a tea guy, but I never order it with my eggs over-easy, hash browns and bacon. That’s because American breakfast joints can’t do tea. Instead, they proffer a little pot full of tepid bathwater and single yellow Lipton bag.

Hitting a fancy, themed chain restaurant doesn’t improve things. They just upcharge for their bathwater and a basket full of perfumed sachets that would be better employed dangling from your car’s rearview mirror after a weekend carwash.

So when I am away from my kitchen, I just default to coffee. It’s not bad, but it normally isn’t that good either. It helps my toast go down and takes care of my morning caffeine therapeutic throat bath. But that’s really all it does. I always walk away from a coffee-based breakfast especially self-conscious of my coffee breath, because, like a hangover after PBR, I got it without having that great of a time.

Now, you can get really good coffee here in the United States; it just isn’t common. You can’t get it fast in truck stops or shopping malls or at the counter of your favorite eggs-and-bacon-and-pancakes eatery. You get it drained from a bucket or carafe where the best you can hope for is the clerk or server who says, “You’re lucky, I just made it!”

Made it from what? Tiny nodules scooped from a giant open bin?

I was reminded of the delinquency of American coffee last fall, when my wife and I wandered around western and southern Europe for a month and re-discovered just how well coffee for the masses could be done.

Don't you agree?

We hit a Back-Factory in Worms during the mid-morning rush. The formica bauhaus tables were packed and crumbed and splashed as strangers crushed against each other cheek to jowl to shovel their pastries and suck down coffee. Those who couldn’t find a new friend overflowed into the cobbled shopping district.

German bakery snack chains, like Back-Factory, stock their shining shelves with a constant stream and wide variety of goodies from the bakery that clatters away just behind the service counter and pump out rich, dark coffee by the endless litre all self-serve at a noisy station just inside the door, where any patron back-up would stall the whole cafeteria-style process, but instead an endless stream of caffeine-hungry shoppers and office workers moved through easily. This automated station ground beans and delivered coffee at a rate and quality the baristas wouldn’t dare bet their tip money on. And the product? A cup of creamy, smooth brew without any harsh bite, covered with a layer of steaming froth. Perfect, cheap, fast.

Did I mention this was a chain?

Coffee?

With all this chaos and demand, Back-Factory still manages to produce excellent coffee in the same quantities as McDonalds pumps out Coca-Cola.

It seems like America has an unconscious, perhaps even guilty, understanding of our inability to give the crowds a decent cup of coffee. But instead of making a reasonable shift in preparation technique, we go for glam. We are like the high school freshman who works too hard to wear her womanhood, and tries all the glitter and spray and color from every tube and bottle and box Cosmo Girl can pitch her.

As a result, we have Starbucks and her ilk, all over-compensating for cafe impotence with esoteric menu boards full of overpriced, candied concoctions served by carefully chatty twenty-somethings. Plus, the ridiculous “international” linguistic mashup of size names just seems desperate.

Now, every time I tuck into an ABC omelet and take my first sip of joe, I think, damn, there are machines that can do the job better.

Look, I’m not a coffee connoisseur. I've never had coffee shat out of a Civet cat. And while I appreciate Todd Carmichael's zealous pursuit of coffee and bullets, all I really want is the same quality cup harried German white-collar workers get their hynde around everyday.
Maybe I should tell the manager he should check out Back-Factory’s website and “Werden die Franchise Partner!”