Let’s face it, fast food restaurants are not where you’d think to get good coffee.  Even if I’m on the fly and don’t have time to make good coffee at home, I still wouldn’t stop at McDonald’s.  While Starbucks emphasizes the cafe experience, they were very wise to include drive-through service at their locations because there is enough of us coffee-drinkers that need a cup on the move.


I would drive through a Starbucks for a coffee, I would not drive through a McDonald’s for a coffee.  There are a couple reasons.  First, Starbucks knows coffee and McDonald’s knows fast food service – sorry, “good food made quickly”.  Second, I don’t drink coffee while I’m eating a burger and that’s what I go to McDonald’s for.

It’s a good argument about whether McDonald’s should even mention they serve coffee or take the approach of many fast food restaurants who have a pot of coffee brewed for those that want it, but don’t otherwise go out of their way to promote it.  After all, you don’t want to NOT have coffee when somebody asks.  But if you are going to offer it, it better be at least tolerable whether it’s your forte or not.  This has been a particular problem for McDonald’s, who let coffee quality suffer for too long to be forgotten while still serving a sizable breakfast clientele.

McDonald’s has taken a few kicks at the can to build the perception that their coffee is at least tolerable.  One of the recent attempts was a partnership with Higgins and Burke.  I don’t honestly know what happened to that partnership, but assume it was hurting the H&B brand if anything.

Earlier this year, Burger King announced a strategic partnership with Seattle’s Best Coffee (SBC).  SBC is owned by Starbucks but is a brand that competes more with the likes of Dunkin Donuts than a higher-end cafe.  Starbucks has pulled off selling their whole beans into grocery channels where it can still sell for a premium compared to the standard grocery store fare.  But if the BK Lounge was selling Starbucks coffee, it could only hurt the coffee giant’s premium brand so a better play with the SBC brand.

What’s this have to do with McDonald’s coffee?  This partnership was fairly predictable.  With McD’s renewed focus on coffee and the rollout of its McCafe, it’s tit for tat from Burger King.  McDonald’s made a significant investment to “cafe-size” the look of its restaurants so people would take their coffee seriously.  Rather than invest in a similar cosmetic makeover, BK can simply align itself with a known coffee brand, similar to the McDonalds – Higgins and Burke partnership but with a more recognized brand in SBC.

I’ve been putting off trying the new McDonald’s coffee because I’m one of those people that will never forget how bad it used to be.  When I first saw the new inside of a McDonald’s, I was tempted to take them seriously but still didn’t sink to trying their new coffee (touted as McDonald’s Premium Roast).  But now that BK is entering this partnership, it shows their need to respond to McDonald’s and now, I’m starting to think I’ve put off trying McD’s new coffee for too long.

I’m a member of Peet’s Coffee and Tea coffee subscription plan, called Peetniks.  Well actually, there are a couple reasons that’s not true.  Really, the Peetniks membership was a gift for my parents and I have hijacked it for my own greedy coffee needs.  The other thing is that I keep getting Peet’s to delay my monthly shipments while I work through a coffee overstock at home.  And before I could stop the flood of coffee, the last delivery was of one of Peet’s three big custom blends, their Blend 101.

I’m mixing it up between this and an Ethiopian Harrar coffee.  I love Peet’s Blend 101 but I also love their Major Dickason blend.  If you’re wondering how they can all be so good, there are a couple reasons.  First, Peet’s knows coffee and few people know that it was the inspiration for now-rival Starbucks itself.  So when it comes to blending coffee to recipe, they don’t make a bad blend.  Which leads me to the second reason.  A good roaster should have more than one blend, each one trying to include different coffee accents for different coffee tastes.

While the Major Dickason might be their “signature blend” (the Pike Place to Starbucks) and while they have a formal House Blend like any good roaster,  the Blend 101 has its own stand-outs.  It’s good to know what you like and don’t like in a coffee so you can decide for yourself.  And while I think you should put Blend 101 on your list of coffees to try, here’s what you should know about the flavor:

• Body: Its heaviness between being watery and syrupy is middle of the road.  It is fuller than their House Blend but not as full-bodied as their Major Dickason.  I like a full body, anything less reminds me of the junk coffee-flavored water that McDonald’s used to sell us years and years ago.  But a medium body isn’t too bad so it doesn’t have to be as full as the Dickason for me to like it.
• Acidity: The pop of coffee.  You won’t find a “brighter”, higher-pitched blend from Peet’s, and this one has it over the Dickason blend.  Acidity -not to be confused with stomach acid from drinking coffee- is the pop that makes coffee taste like coffee.  The more acidity, the more exciting although not everybody is looking for that pop.  I like a lively cup of coffee and this one delivers.
• Complexity: There are lots of different and complementary coffee accents captured in this blend.  As Peet’s advertises it, it has “spicy notes” that you won’t find in the other blends.  I like a blend that captures a broad range.

I suggest putting this coffee on your list.  While not as heavy as the Major Dickason blend, it makes up for it to me personally in a blend that’s anything but simple.  Check out the Peet’s Coffee and Tea website.  If you ordered one pound each of the Blend 101 and Major Dickason, I believe you’ll find you enjoy both but for different reasons.  And that’s what I love about coffee.

On my recent visit to the Fire Roasted Coffee Company (FRCC) in Ontario, Canada, owner David Cook picked out a pound of their Papua New Guinea coffee for me to try.  I brought it home and threw it on top of my current coffee overstock at home.  This would be my first coffee from New Guinea and since it was hand-roasted by the FRCC and hand-picked by its owner, I knew if the quality of bean was good, that the brewed coffee would be outstanding.


And the verdict is that it was outstanding.  Papua New Guinea coffee is often overlooked, and you aren’t likely to find it even in most specialty coffee shops.  It simply does not have name appeal and this is what makes it a well-kept secret, because it’s a great coffee.  As advertised, it has a soft richness, sweet acidic flavor, and dark rich body.  In fact, I recommend it for anybody that enjoys a dark roast over a medium roast.  It is very well suited for the darker roasts, which I like personally.

And I felt good drinking it because FRCC’s Papua New Guinea coffee is grown organically and Fair Trade certified.  This means that the coffee farmer that is likely not living under the best of conditions received a fair minimum price for the coffee he harvested, and some small part of the coffee sold retail will go towards development projects in the growing region.

One more interesting point.  New Guinea has great growing conditions and these particular beans come from plants transplanted from the infamous Jamaican Blue Mountain region.  Along with Hawaiian Kona coffee, Jamaican Blue Mountain fetches a big premium.  Over time, Blue Mountain coffee has lost some of the consistency in how it’s processed and while it still costs as much, the quality varies and its reputation has been hurt.  These transplants to New Guinea do not come with the same premium on price so I can pretend I’m drinking coffee with the elite of the world but with better quality, more consistency, and of benefit to the coffee grower.

Learn more about the Fire Roasted Coffee Company’s Papua New Guinea coffee.

Peets Coffee and Tea carries a New Guinea coffee they call New Guinea Highlands.  They say in their opinion, it’s one of the BEST coffees in the world and they know coffee.  That’s a big claim since you simply don’t hear people talking about New Guinea coffee.

And for that lack of name appeal, the more retail-focused Starbucks Store does not carry a coffee from New Guinea.  It is understandable so consider trying this from Peets or if you would like to support the Fair Trade cause, check out trying this from the Fire Roasted Coffee Company.

The last couple weeks, my appetite for coffee has been bigger than my shelf space.  OK, I have plenty of shelf space but it’s best to buy only what you need for the next 2-3 weeks of coffee drinking.  That will ensure what you have is always fresh or almost done.

Part of my overstock is the often overlooked Starbucks House Blend.  I was always confused by how many blends of coffee Starbucks would tout, such as their Pike Place and Cafe Verona.  Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t had one I didn’t like, I just feel when you promote so many blends, you take some spotlight off of the one that’s supposed to be your signature, and that’s the House Blend.


I bought a pound of it a couple weeks back and guess what, it’s still awesome.  If you’ve never had it,  it is a blend of Latin American beans.  It is smoother than many coffees, or as Starbucks calls it, “Medium” compared to their “Bold” and “Extra Bold”.  So it won’t overpower whatever you enjoy it with, but still not as mellow as their Breakfast Blend which is for those who like something milder for their first cup of the day.

The House Blend is smooth but at the same time, has a lot of flavor in my opinion.  I think they started blending other coffees for particular tastes, but the House Blend is meant to be their signature blend so that it’s what you’ll find when a generic “Starbucks coffee” is being served to you in restaurants or through office services.  While the more touted blends have taken some spotlight off it, I have enjoyed coming back to the House Blend and learning I still like it.

In fact, I would say to the coffee lover that’s been stuck on a particular blend, region, or source for coffee that they should try this one again.  It’s a great starting point, from which you can go bolder or mellower.  Either way, I think you’ll agree that this is always dependable and as I’m learning this week, great to come back to.  Thanks to my overstock problem, I’ll probably be having plenty of it in the next week.

Learn more about Starbucks House Blend.

The Fire Roasted Coffee Company
London, Ontario, Canada
Fire Roasted Coffee website

I recently visited this roastery and came out about twice as coffee-smart.  For even the casual coffee drinker, there was some great insight that I want to share.  Check it out!

The owner
David Cook started out as a merchandiser for a major grocery retailer.  His background, right up until an executive position with the retailer, is culinary and the man loves coffee.  He experimented with roasting his own coffee beans at home using simple household means, eventually graduating up to a three-pound roaster.

David started roasting for the neighborhood at garage sales and eventually bagged some small local accounts.  The people loved the coffee and the attention to detail from somebody with a culinary background.  Eventually, the home roasting “business” was rivaling his 9-5 job in pay.  David took the plunge and quit his job to grow the Fire Roasted Coffee Company.

Focus on roasting

David brought some interesting things to my attention.  I don’t buy coffee in a grocery store but I do buy it from big-scale roasters.  A big retailer like Starbucks knows coffee well and has a nice operation for its mass.  But there’s a premium to coffee that comes with more careful roasting.

A big-scale operation will automate because it means less human attention and of course, that saves money.  But if you put an actual roaster on it, that person can roast to perfection with an appreciation for changes in consistency both in climate and the bean itself from one batch to another.  There’s a science to roasting and it’s inconsistent enough from day to day and bean to bean, that hand-roasted attention comes through in the cup.  You lose this consistency when you profile a region’s bean but then automate its roasting instead of paying close attention to it.  The most meticulous home coffee roasters never leave their machine while the coffee is roasting.

You’d assume that means a premium built into the price too.  Wrong.  A pound of coffee at FRCC costs a few dollars less than buying at Starbucks.

Care for customer education
As soon as you walk in, there’s a heavy focus on “coffee education”.  The people who roast coffee for FRCC are also the same people interacting with customers and working in this very transparent environment.  To answer customers’ questions, why not have the very people that roasted the customer’s coffee.

It couldn’t be more transparent, it’s wide open.  FRCC pulls the curtain back so you can see everything from the 30 burlap sacks of green, unroasted coffee from most every growing region in the world, the big Diedrich roasting machine that roasts 20 pounds of coffee at a time, and the weighing and packaging station.

Former customer, current roaster Patrick Dunham overseeing 30 coffees imported from around the world.

From the packaging table, it gets put on the shelf and you buy it in plain view of the whole operation.  From burlap sack to retail pack, the whole place is wide open.  What else is there to see other than the coffee farm itself?

Coffee is sold and imported raw.  It begins to expire once it’s roasted so it’s important to have the roasting operation close.  FRCC lets you see everything you may have taken for granted in just how important good roasting is to the coffee in your cup.

Care for coffee
Talking to David, I got the sense more than once that it isn’t about making money, it’s about love of coffee.  If there was anything I got the feeling bothered David about even being a coffee merchant, it’s for the very poor conditions of coffee growers.  In the coffee supply chain, they have it worse than anybody.  FRCC boasts the largest local selection of Fair Trade coffees.  Click here to read my previous post on Fair Trade coffees.

David doing some heavy thinking about what coffee I should take home. In the end, their Ethiopian Harrar and Papua New Guinea, both Fair Trade coffees.

David ran me through photos of a recent tour through El Salvador and Guatemala to visit some of their farms.  Their coffee is amazing but the living conditions of locals is just not good.  You’ll hear me say “life’s too short for bad coffee”, and assume at least the coffee is good in these growing regions.  But David reminds me that in these countries, the absolute worst of the worst coffee cultivated is sold to the locals.  They drink the worst of their own coffee.  But in the grand scheme of things, that’s very much beside the point, conditions are terrible all around, full families in small dwellings with limited amenities.

FRCC’s Fair Trade coffee ensures a set price for the coffee farmer, fair wages for their workers, and development projects for the growing area.  I would appeal to coffee drinkers to pay a few dollars more a pound just to make sure that aid gets to the people who toil to get that coffee in our cups.  But as I mentioned, there’s no price premium.  Again, a pound of coffee from FRCC is a few dollars less than other local sources.  Imagine that…giving to an important charity that produces something you love by paying less for that thing.

Check out the Fire Roasted Coffee website.  You can order coffee right from their site, and I encourage anybody in southwestern Ontario to check out the roasting operation for themselves.