Thanks to Jacques for sending this in.

I remember when Jolt Cola first came out.  The concern was that we were going to end up with younger and younger caffeine addicts.  Sure, coffee doesn’t have a minimum drinking age but it’s simply not as accessible to children as soda.  When caffeine equivalent to a cup of coffee was put into a soda on store shelves, the schools would be filled with tazmanian devils.


Then came Red Bull, just as accessible as Jolt but slightly more dangerous because the period of consumption is shorter.  Now you get all the same effect compressed into a smaller drink.  Heck, it’s not even carbonated so it doesn’t take as long as Jolt to drink.  To be sure these “energy drinks” are more about the affect than flavor, where is Jolt?  I know it’s still around (barely), but Red Bull and the knock-offs all but kicked it the back of the shelf.

And now, David Edwards, professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard University (yeah, I checked, he’s still there – I was expecting “former professor”) has designed a product called LeWhif.  Originally designed so people could inhale the flavor of chocolate without the calories, its second generation version promises the “kick of coffee without the cup”.

Now while you drink your coffee, your toddlers can enjoy the same high without the hot bitter beverage. Look at the guy in the grey jacket on the far left, even he knows there's something wrong with this.

How does it work?  Users place one end of the stick, which is about the size of a lipstick tube, to their lips then inhale gently.  “Whiffers” intake about 100 milligrams of caffeine which is equivalent to a small cup of espresso and less than a single calorie per Whif.

Remember where you were when I predicted this will be a huge problem in the public school system!

…22 gallons of coffee per year (US stats). This is according to a marketing company that paid to have the research done covering the year 2000 which I decided shouldn’t be markedly different in coffee consumption from today.

The first thing I asked myself was how I compared to the average person. Not the average coffee drinker, but the average person. I’m down to 4-5 cups of coffee per day (mugs of coffee, not metric cups). I make 8-9 metric cups per day and there are four of those in a liter.

So if I drink 2 liters of coffee per day, then I drink 730 liters of coffee in a year, or 193 gallons. This shouldn’t be too far from the truth. After all, I really drink 2.25 liters of coffee per day if I make 9 cups, but I rounded down. And that’s how much coffee I make just to take on the challenges of a regular day. On days where I didn’t get enough sleep the night before or just feel like having an extra coffee, it’s probably more.

So the average person drinks 22 gallons of coffee per year, and I drink 193 gallons. In fact, I’m probably pushing 200. That’s huge.  I suppose I should be very interested in the coffee-health studies I usually ignore.

Now, I’m interested in how much coffee is consumed by the average coffee drinker. That would probably be a more reasonable comparison for me. All I know by this is that I drink almost ten times as much coffee as the average person!

Canadian coffee giant Tim Horton’s is preparing to announce international expansion plans when it presents its 2009 fourth quarter results in one month on February 26th.

Tim Horton’s was founded in 1964 in Hamilton, Canada by former Canadian hockey player Tim Horton and two others.  Following Horton’s death in a car crash in 1974, management of the small chain was assumed by partner Ron Joyce who took it national and expanded it into a multi-million dollar franchise.  Tim Horton’s has since surpassed McDonald’s in Canada as the country’s largest food service operator, and controls almost two thirds of the country’s quick-service coffee market – to put the brand in perspective, Starbucks holds the number two spot with 7% market share.  Today, Tim Horton’s is across all markets one of Canada’s top ten brands, measured by brand value.  The chain was sold by Joyce to Wendy’s International, who has since spun it off, still as a public company.

International expansion of Tim Horton’s locations has been mostly limited to northeastern United States, close to its strongest market in Ontario.  After the success of 12 new locations opened in New York City last summer, the company is planning its most aggressive expansion.  Expansion to date outside of North America has been limited to a small presence in the UK and Ireland.  Despite an overall downtown in the North American quick-service industry, Tim Horton’s opened over 100 new locations in the first three quarters of 2009.

It will be interesting to watch the expansion of this Canadian brand.  After all, the chain does little that can’t be replicated and does not offer a dining area that is very different from its peers, regardless of the national market.  The chain has brought some innovation to quick-service, including drive-thru coffee service and its annual ‘roll up the rim’ promotion – both of which since replicated by its peers.  It has also managed to increase the average order size at the cashier by introducing “premium” coffees (read: between their regular and a Starbucks coffee) and sandwiches.  The question remains whether a stalwart Canadian brand can bring something new to market internationally.

Learn more about Tim Horton’s.

In the middle of this month, Starbucks -a public company traded on the Nasdaq- reported its fourth quarter results for 2009 to close out the year. Amidst news almost a year old now of Starbucks shutting down many US locations and most Australian locations, how did they do? Very well.

In somewhat of a surprise for investors, Starbucks showed many promising signs of recovery, including the success of…its instant coffee?  Where Starbucks is a premium brand and instant coffee is not widely respected among coffee drinkers, the launch of Starbucks’ VIA brand instant coffee was met with much skepticism, including by yours truly.  You might remember by Starbucks VIA taste test where I was challenged to identify which was the instant and which was the drip-brewed Pike Place blend.  I admitted while I could identify which was which that the VIA was the best instant coffee I’d ever had, for what it’s worth.

For Starbucks, it’s been worth plenty.  A net income increase of almost 300%, and a sales increase of 4%.  But where sales increased 4%, store traffic increased by only 1%…meaning roughly the same number of people are paying more or buying more at the cash machine.  That is a healthy sign for the Starbucks brand.

Starbucks customers are apparently enjoying the VIA coffee, which is sold not only in Starbucks locations, but also in Target, Amazon, and Costco.   CEO Howard Schultz was excited about VIA, pointing out that people can enjoy it wherever they go, as a single-serve option that “does not require costly proprietary brewing equipment.”  That sounded to me like a crack against the one-shot pod coffee machines out now, like Keurig’s.

Starbucks share value soared 162% in one year.  I don’t own shares of Starbucks but I am a regular Starbucks customer and happy to see that their decisions are being supported by great results.  It means I should be able to count on the same quality and consistency, and the occasional new product like the VIA – I still have one pouch left from when I originally bought some

Last week, 10 enforcement officers for Malaysia’s Health Ministry raided the premises of a distributor in Kuala Lumpur and seized their supply of coffee.  The special brand of coffee was being advertised “as enabling men to feel their full masculinity”.  How exactly did this new coffee give men the lift they needed?  The distributor was adding sildenafil into the coffee mixture to boost sales.

For those of you who don’t know, sildenafil is the drug found in Viagra for men with the floppy gomez problem.  As the new coffee became a growing hit among consumers, the Health Ministry became aware of the advertised claims, obtained and tested a sample of the coffee, and proceeded to hit the distributor responsible.  A case of ten packets of coffee mixture was selling for the equivalent of USD $60.  To account for the uplifting effects, the distributor claimed a mixture of herb extracts and honey, but nothing about sildenafil.

All of the coffee in stock was seized and the company’s owner could face two years in Malaysian prison.  It just doesn’t make sense to me, they should put this stuff in whiskey, not coffee.