My views about multinationals and chains are generally pretty nuanced, except when it comes to coffee. So I’m happy enough to go to Borders in a (successful) search for “The Nutmeg of Consolation” (Patrick O’Brian) especially since, as I recall, there’s quite nice little independent coffee shop in a corner of the store. I get the book and order my coffee. I’m vaguely aware that something is wrong, but, given my decaffeinated state, it’s not until I look around and see everyone drinking out of paper cups that I realise the awful truth – the place had turned into a Gloria Jean’s. I drank the coffee anyway, and it wasn’t as bad as my previous experience several years ago, but I certainly won’t be going back.
Then I come home to write this post on multinationals, flick to the SMH, and discover that GJ is about to become an Australian multinational. I don’t have any particular thoughts on this, other than to say that the idea that there might be 240 000 people willing to pay to drink this stuff every day is alarming.
John Quiggin 
that’s exactly right Sir.
and their chai tea sucks.
One of the more important issues with coffee is not who sells it but how it is grown. Shade grown coffee is to be preferred from the point of view of preventing deforestation.
I’m kind of fond of the cafe in Dymocks city store in George St Sydney.
I remember a cafe in San Francisco which had shelves of old books you browse while you drank your coffee. I don’t think they sold books, they just had them there for you to read.
Recently I went to an Irish pub in Canberra and it looked like they were doing the same thing… but it turned out that the books were firmly glued into the shelves.
They had lots of good beer on tap but fixing books to shelving with adhesive is a bit like burning them. Does anyone else think this is wrong?
When I last visited Gloria Jeans, I (and a friend)were pressed to try their ‘Vanilla Coffee’. No thanks, we said. We wanted our latees. But since the waiter was so insistent, we decided to try it – with one condition: if we weren’t happy we could get our money back.
And lo, we did – after two sips. I was half expecting a drop or two of the vanilla extract they sell at the supermarket. But no: they used Gloria Jean’s own vanilla syrup – as viscous as an Exxon Valdez oil-slick – and actually manufactured for adding to consumers’ coffee. The result – as you expect – was too sickly sweet.
Syrup in coffee is an abomination I suspect is due to America. Sweeten your coffee if you like, but any true blue Aussie should use raw sugar if available. Processed white is acceptable. But never treacle.
I’ve observed that restuarants with good food often don’t do all that well. It seems resturants on good bits of real estate do much better than similar resturants with better food and worse real estate. I’m thinking particularly of Canberra resturants. Then again, there are exceptions (like the Ottoman which has food to die for and has gone from strength to strength.)
Nowhere near as horrible, John, as the coffee at Starbucks on the other side of Adelaide St…
ps – best coffee in Brisbane CBD I think is Aromas at the Wintergarden… oh, and I meant Elizabeth St! Long day! Not enough coffee!
Why were you at Borders? Nobody goes there. The real books are at Readings, a good Aussie store across the street.
And coffee, you get that at the Lygon St Food Store. Or Brunettis. No need to drink paper cup crap in Carlton.
Dear me.
Bill – John’s talking about Brissie – not a good town for bookstores. Though Avid Reader at West End and Folio in Albert St are both good, we’re sadly lacking somewhere like Readings or Gleebooks in Sydney.
I like my coffee stupidly sweet. But thats probably because Im a whimp.
I seem to recall a related multinational vs local coffee provision theme being well expressoed on CT yonks ago – complete with instant Nescafeturf.
I’m going to sound like a real coffee Philistine and admit that I love Gloria Jeans coffee. The “White Chocolate Mocha” and “Coco Loco Mocha Chilla” are delicious. I could not handle them every day as they are ridiculously rich, but I am not a regular coffee drinker so that’s ok.
I always felt a bit guilty enjoying the fruits of an American multi-national as opposed to supporting locally owned independent shops. Very happy to learn that at least they are Australian owned.
Gloria Jeans or Starbucks = absolute last resort. He or she who goes without coffee (or some form of caffiene) in times of need shalt be frazzled and useless.
Someone told me Gloria Jeans was owned by the Seventh Day Adventists (or some group like that), urban myth?
Anyway, I go to the GJ’s at Borders in Sydney because you can take the magazines in there and read them without buying them. Much more satisfactory than spending heaps on those air freighted mags every week. I drink at alot of little coffee shops (I live in the elitist latte sipping capital of Sydney’s inner west after all) so I don’t feel too guilty about it. The franchises are owned by locals.
I read somewhere recently that Sydney’s Hillsong Church is the owner or major partner in GJs.
One visit was enough to a GJ store was enough.
Perhaps don’t really have the same sweet tooth as Americans. I understand the Krispy Kreme donut shop at Penrith is not going well. I am yet to meet more than person who likes the revolting deep-fried fat & sugar products which have the taste and consistency of rancid oil.
Update on the relationship of GJs and Hillsong:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/03/1093939141357.html
Go down the page to the headline ‘Gloria B’
I like Avid Reader very much, but I don’t get to West End that often. Folio is good but for things like a comprehensive collection of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, Borders is hard to beat.
..”I live in the elitist latte sipping capital of Sydney’s inner west”.. [Sic]
Um, Amanda, I know you were referring to elitist in the social sense, but I have to point out that any sentence with words related to elite, coffee and Sydney suffers an irreconcilable contradiction.
I just spent a couple of days pottering around inner Sydney, and the dearth of decent coffee made me want to stand up and scream “Brunswick Street you fools” at no-one in particular.
Elitist Latte sipping Northcote dweller =)
You are surprise by the 240,000 people paying for GJ? What about the much larger number who drinks Nescafe? By the way, sugar in coffee is abomination too.
Sugar. Not at all Dr K, it’s good dialectics.
JQ, not quite sure what the multinational aspect of this has got to do with anything. If the locals make better coffee, reward them by giving them your patronage. If they make lousy coffee, tell them and take your patronage elsewhere. Go back some time to see if they’ve improved. If the multinational makes the best coffee (unlikely, but let’s just assume it as a hypothetical) why wouldn’t they deserve your business? (Apart from other considerations, such as where they source their coffee – see my earlier post – and how they treat their staff.)
“I just spent a couple of days pottering around inner Sydney, and the dearth of decent coffee made me want to stand up and scream “Brunswick Street you fools” at no-one in particular.”
Shh! It’s like inviting ants to a picnic.
To Whom it May Concern:
If you like Gloria Jeans, that’s very nice.
Martin, of course. I take the inferiority of anything Sydney to all things Melbourne to go without saying. All ways happy to be set straight by my cultural masters.
I don’t really care about quality really. Coffee, champagne, men, sex, drugs, fed labor leaders — good enough is good enough!
All ways = Always
True, John. The fiction section in Borders is one of the big attractions – but the politics/current affairs section is weak (too many ephemeral US titles) and much inferior even to the big Dymocks on Adelaide & Edward Sts and sections like Sociology, Philosophy and Literary Theory are really an American college reading list and nothing much else. Folio has one of the only decent Philosophy sections.
What we really lack in Brisbane is a big bookstore with a good and comprehensive coverage of academic titles aka Readings or Gleebooks. Consequently, amazon make a lot of money from me. The UQ bookshop is more of a coffee shop with books.
Incidentally, I’m yet to find any bookstore in Brisbane with a good range of titles on Economics…
“Incidentally, I’m yet to find any bookstore in Brisbane with a good range of titles on Economics…”
Tear-jerking stuff!
You’d need stuff focussed on the Qld economy wouldn’t you? Class 101:
If it looks pretty build a resort, if it swims net it, if it flows past your farm dump toxins in it, and if you want to do deals wear white shoes and carry a well-stuffed brown envelope.
Far from sugar in coffee being an abomination, brewing everything up in a sugar solution was the only way it could be made at all with primitive equipment. Hence the Arab, Turkish and Greek tradition in coffee. However, the general principle is correct; additives to drinks recipes should never be provided, over and above those they were originally designed around. Few of these experiments succeed, though milk in tea does (but milk in coffee is ridiculous – it buffers something that should hit you).
Personally, I like the wider beverage stuff Hahndorf’s does here in Melbourne; it starts as a chocolatier, of course. In season, I thoroughly approve of their iced chocolate.
(Sorry, I don’t have the resources to contribute much to posts just at the moment.)
I do worry when Melbourne people get uppity about coffee. Having spent a few weeks working down there and being directed all over the place for decent coffee, it’s fair to say that I was disappointed. Firstly, Mocha seems to be unknown in Melbourne Barista (I use the term very lightly) circles and secondly, no one seems to know what turkish toast is. When you go for the large mocha and turkish toast with marmelade quinella, you may as well be from Mars.
GJ and Starbucks are both overpriced and aren’t great. For the inner westies, Scrambled at the top of Enmore Road goes very well and if you work in the city near Martin Place, Obelisk goes nicely also.
regards
Ray
I have been past Scrambled on the bus but haven’t been in. When I lived in Enmore it was a very good Irish-themed cafe which did an exceptionally yummy fruit toast.
No coffee situation anywhere in Australia I believe could be worse than Moscow. If they have cappucino at all it is covered in a toxic cinnammon concoction.
Best espresso coffee in Adelaide is at “Illy” on the corner of Gawler Place and Grenfell St. Uses “Illy” coffee, hot cups and scalding, short coffee. Essential for an excellent “short black”.
“Illy” are by far the best beans to grind for an espresso.
In Naples, often sugar is placed in the cup before the coffee is extracted from the machine.
Best coffee in Rome, by the way, is Tazza d’Oro, a few paces from the Pantheon in the Piazza della Rotunda.
Don – re book gluing – “Wrong” is much too forgiving a word.
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Alex – A third consideration, especially for multinational zillionaire corp.s, is what they do with their precipitated gains. In the case of Starbucks that’s a real concern, though their coffee is consistent and druggishly effective. It reminds me of the rationalizing one used to hear from serious cocaine habituants – the drug outshone the food chain that delivered it. Blood and slaves at one end, ruined lives at the other – but it felt so good.
Bucky, I don’t know if you have any superannuation, but if you have, or intend to have, a good deal of it is likely to be invested in multinational corps. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be concerned about their ethics – quite the opposite. Unethical corps tend to end up dudding their shareholders as well, eg Enron. But my point is, a good deal of the profits from multinationals might end up in your pocket.
So Alex are you saying I should be concerned whether or not my java’s shade-grown, and my server’s got health benefits, but if my retirement’s coming from Buttco International I should just say thanks and keep quiet about their funding paramilitaries in the Third World?
Am I missing the why on the first two? To make a better world out of this one yes?
My point was the why’s important across the board. Recycling’s good, gas-efficiency’s good, excusing the funding of dark practices in foreign lands is not good, right? It’s about the shareholder’s responsibility to the world isn’t it? Where the real power is. In a consumer retail relationship that would be us, yes? The caffeinated?
I think so, and I think Starbuck’s is not a benign player on the world stage, regardless of, as I said, how consistently good their beverages, in my opinion, are.
Chill, chill. I did say you *should* be concerned about multinationals’ ethics.
Don and Bucky, what do you think of Cohen the Barbarian’s observations on the subject of bookburning in one of Terry Pratchett’s early Discworld novels?
He truly deplored the practices of the young barbarians these days, throwing books on fires like that. Everybody knew that you should do it a page at a time, to make it last longer.
I’m sorry, but I can’t recall the precise reference. It was somewhere near the point where Cohen makes some incomprehensible remarks about how riding two to a saddle in front of a warrior maiden at least kept his ears warm. Pratchett can be hard to follow sometimes.
Going up to meetings in William St in Sydney, I used to find the coffee pretty damn good, and well adapted to office use.
Melbourne still doesn’t understand the term “double shot”, though we excel – I am told – at the bubbacino.
Let’s face it, for creature comforts Melbourne and Sydney will do you well either time. If you ever doubt the aceness of either spot, try Toronto. As far as I can tell, it is Melbourne with snow and without food.
I actually quite like the Hudson’s coffee you get at the checkin at Virgin, although the environment probably distorts my values.
PML, this only works if the maiden is tall and well-endowed, and you are short. Alternatively, you could have a “king and queen” seat as frequently seen on choppers.
Although I agree with Amanda that good enough is good enough, I do think the circumstances of consumption are decisive. Bad coffee is better than good coffee if the good coffee is in a huge paper cup in a large barn festooned with no-smoking signs. A good book may go some way to countering such evils, but the one Quiggers has is peculiarly inappropriate as it begins with Preserved Killick serving up fresh steaming java in ship’s best silver (and, if memory serves, in the presence of a Malayan lass of remarkable lubricity at that). Come to think of it, the Aubreiad is full of sumptuously arousing coffee breaks.
Alex – Yes.
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PML – Bookburning is easily trumped by the rendering of authorial corpuses, in the gustatory sense, before the offending books are published. Catch them before they sin.
The trees from which the paper from which the books are made is made will provide heat and energy as fuel, more efficiently than inky paper can, and the meat of authors, while generally on the lean side, is no worse nutritionally than the average feed-lot steer’s.