The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States

7/29/2019 The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States

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The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States

Author(s): William RoseberryReviewed work(s):Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 762-775Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/681884 .

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LETUSBEGINat Zabar's, gourmet food emporiumonManhattan'sUpperWest Side. We enter, make ourwaythroughthe crowdwaiting to place ordersin the cheesesection, move quicklypast the prepared foods, lingerover the smoked fish, then arrive at the coffees. There,in full-sizedbarrels arranged n a semicircle, we find adisplay of roasted coffee beans for sale-Kona style,Colombian Supremo, Gourmet Decaf, Blue Mountainstyle, Mocha style, UFrench talian,"Vienna, Decaf Es-presso, WaterProcess Decaf, KenyaAA and a helpfulclerk waiting to fill our order, grind the beans to ourspeciElcation,and suggest one of a small selection offlavoredsyrups.Given Zabar's reputation for quality and excess,this is a rathermodestselection as coffee now goes. Theevidence of plentyand waste can be foundin the size ofthe barrelsand the quantityof roast beans availableforsale and spoilage. But the real spot to spend money isupstairs, where the brewers, grinders, and espressocoffeemakers are sold fromsimple Melittadripconesand carafesto the more seriousKrupsSemiprofessionalProgrammatic $349)or the OlympiaCaffarex($1,000).Zabar's collection of coffee is not especially distin-guished. They eschew the trend toward flavors (rasp-berry, almond, chocolate, amaretto, vanilla, and thelike, in various combinations), offering instead a fewprepackaged coffees in flavors and small bottles offlavored syrups for those customers who prefer them.But only two of their coffees are sold as speciElcvarie-tals, ColombianSupremoand KenyanAA. The rest arestyles" that suggest a geographicplace without having

anything to do with it. Kona style can include beansfrom E1 Salvador, Blue Mountain style, beans fromPuerto Rico, and so on.If I visit the deli across the street from my apart-ment, I can choose from a much wider variety of cof-fees, 43 in all, includingJamaicanBlue Mountain,Vene-zuela Maracaibo,GermanChocolate, Swedish Delight,Double VanillaSwedish Delight,Swiss MochaAlmond,and Decaf Swiss Mocha Almond, to name just a few.These are displayed in burlapbags that take up muchmore space than coffee sections used to occupy whenmy only choices were Maxwell House, Folgers, ChockFull o' Nuts, E1 Pico, and Medaglia d'Oro.And theyrequire he assistance of a clerkto weigh, bag,and grindthe coffee.As I walk down the street, virtuallyeverydeli offersa similarvariety,generally n minibarrels, hough some-times the barrels are distributed in apparentlycasualabundance hroughout he store so that I canalso selectbreads, spreads, teas, chocolates, and cheeses as I de-cide which among the many roasts, varietals,styles, orflavors I will choose this week. I no longer need thegourmet shop though such shops, which proliferatedin the 1980s, continue to thrive, concentratedin citiesbut also present in suburban towns and shoppingmalls to buy what coffee traders call uspecialty" of-fees; nor do I need to be a gourmet to buy and enJoythem (or better said, I need not be a gourrnet o look,act, and feel like one). I can go to the corner deli or themajor supermarket,where even Maxwell House andA&Phavejoined the aspecialtyX rend.Surely these developments are good." Specialtycoffees taste better than mass-marketcoffees. Theyoffer pleasure in many ways: the aroma,ambience,andWILLIAMOSEBERRYs Professor,Departmentf Anthropology,Graduate aculty,NewSchool orSocialResearch,NewYork,NY10003.

AmericanAnthropologist 8(,4):762-775.CopyrightC) 996, AmericanAnthropological ssociation.

WILLIAMROSEBERRY / NEWSCHOOLORSOCIALRESEARCH

T h e R i s e o f Yupp i e Coflees a n d t h eReimaginationf C l a s s i n t h eU n i t e d S t a t e s

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YUPPIECOFFEES NDCLASS N THEUNITED TATES WILLIAM OSEBERRY763

experience of the coffee shop or even the deli itself(indeedypart of the experience of a place like Zabar's sthe succession of smells); the casual conversation withthe shop owner or dinner guest aboutvarietals, roasts,preparationmethods; the identificationwith particularplaces through consumption Copenhagen or Vienna,Jamaica or the Celebes; or the inclusion of coffee pur-chasing, preparation,and consumption in a wideningspectrum of foods including wines, beers, waters,breads, cheeses, sauces, and the like through whichone can cultivate and display taste" and discrimina-tion.t Moreover, the expansion of specialty coffeesmarks a distinct break with a past characterized bymass production and consumption. The move towardthese coffees was not initiated by the giants that domi-nate the coffee trade but by small regionalroasters whodeveloped new sources of supply, new modes and net-works of distribution hat allowed, among other things,for consumers to buy coffee directly(well, not directly)from a peasant cooperative in Chiapasor Guatemala.New coffees, morechoices, more diversity, ess concen-tration, new capitalism: the beverage of postmod-ernism.Proper understandingof the proliferation of spe-cialty coffees requiresconsiderationof the experiencesand choices of the consumer in the coffee shop and atthe dinner able, but it also requiresconsiderationof themethods, networks, and relations of coffee production,processing, distribution,and sale in the 1980s, as wellas a placement of those methods, networks, and rela-tions within a wider history.This essay concentrates on that second range ofquestions, on what might be termed the shapteg oftaste. I begin with two historical issues- first, the com-plex relation between the recent rise of specialty cof-fees and an earlier period characterizedby standardiza-tion and mass-marketing, and second, the specifichistory of specialty coffees themselves. In consideringboth, I deal with coffee in particular, but what washappeningwith coffee marketingandconsumptionwasnot at all unrelatedto what was happeningwith manyother food commodities. I then turnto a range of ques-tions that might be termed sociological: How has theturn toward specialty coffees been organized?Whathasbeen the position and role of the giantcorporations hatdominated the coffee trade duringthe period of stan-dardization? Who have been the innovators andaagents"of change in the move toward specialty cof-fees? How have they organized themselves?How havethey reimagined and reorganized the market? Whatkinds of class and generational maps of United Statessociety have they used in their reimaginationof themarket?How have they imagined themselves, and theclass and generational segments they target as their

market niche, in relation to a wider world of coffeeproducers?These more historical and sociological questionsraise issues for anthropological nterpretation.Can thestudy of changing marketingandconsumption patternsof a single commodityat a particularmoment even amundane commodity produced for everyday and rou-tine consumption shed some lighton a wider rangeofsocial and cultural shifts? We have a good example ofsuch an analysisin Sidney Mintz'sSweetness and Power(1985), an exploration of the growing and changingpresence of sugar in the English diet from the 17ththrough 19th centuries, linked explicitly and neces-sarily-to industrialization nd the growth of a workingclass, changing modes of life, consumption,and social-ity in growing cities in England, and to the estab-lishment of colonial power, plantation economies, andslave labor in the Caribbean.The range of issues con-sidered here is more modest, but it shares Mintz'scon-viction that the social history of the use of new foodsin a western nation can contributeto an anthropologyof modern life"(1985:xxviii).A distinctive feature of the essay is that the datacome largelyfrom two trade ournals, WorldCoffeeandTea (WC&T)and Coffee and Cocoa International(C&CI).Thesejournals raise several questions, the Elrstof which is methodological-the use of trade journalsin relation to other possible methods and sources, in-cluding ethnographicones. Thejournals give us accessto the preoccupations, diagnoses, and strategies of arange of actors in the coffee trade growers, traders,roasters, distributors,and retailers large and small, inproducingas well as consumingcountries. In one sense,they share a common interest: to increase coffee con-sumption and maximize profits. In many other senses,their interests and their stakes in the coffee trade differ.If we are trying to understandthese actors theirinterpretationsand intentions, their images of the so-cial world in which they act, their disagreements anddisputes, andtheir actions tradejournals constitute acentral, readily available, and underused source. Buttheir use raises a second related and interesting issueof the trade journalas text. The articles in the journalsspeak to a particularkind of public in this case, to anassumed communityof coffeemen." The anthropolo-gist who woulduse these articles for other purposeshasthe strong sense that he (in this case) is eavesdropping,or to returnto the text peering over the shoulderofthe intendedreader.

Connections and ContrastsWe understandand value the new specialty coffeesin relation to the past," though in fact more than one



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Year Percentagednnking1962 74.71974 61.61975 61.61976 59.11977 57.91978 56.71979 57.21980 56.61981 56.41982 56.31983 55.21984 57-31985 54*91986 52.41987 52.01988 50.0

764 AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 98, NO. 4 * DECEMBER996

In an importantessay, Michael Jimenez(1995) de-scribes the processes through which coffee was trans-formedfroman elite and expensive beverage,with an-nual per capita consumption in the United States atthree pounds in 1830,to a relatively inexpensive drinkconsumed in working-classhomes and at factory Ucof-fee breakst across the country by 1930. Much of hisanalysis concerns the Elrst hree decades of the 20thcentury, by which time coffee was widely distributedand consumed.Of special relevance is Jimenez's analysis of theemergence of a more concentrated and consolidatedcoffee trade in the Elrst hree decades of this century,one that had developed a central directing (thoughnotcontrolling) authority and imposed standardizedno-tions of quality and taste in the creation of a nationalmarket. Jimenez shows that we cannot understandtransformations in the coffee trade without under-standinga broad rangeof economic and socialtransfor-mations in the history of Americancapitalism-the in-dustrial revolution of the late 19th century and thecreation of a morehomogeneous proletariat; he devel-opment of nationalmarkets and modes of distribution;the revolutionin food production,processing, and dis-tributionthat resulted in the creation of the supermar-ket, among other things (indeedX he histories of thesupermarketand of standardization n the coffee tradeare contingent); the revolution in advertising; he con-centrationandconsolidation of American ndustry;andso on. In all this, the particularhistory of the standard-ization of coffee for mass markets is not unrelated tothe history of standardization, indeed industrializa-tion,"of foods in general in the 19thand 20thcenturies(see Goody 1982:154-174).

TablePercentage f U.S.population rinking offee, 1962-88. Redrawn ndsimplified fter WC& 1989a.

past is being imagined. On the one hand, specialty cof-fees are placed in positive relation to the past of, say,two decades ago,when most coffee in the UnitedStateswas sold in cans in supermarkets, he roasts were lightand bland, the decaffeinated coffees undrinkable,thechoices limited to brand and perhaps grind, and thetrade dominated by General Foods and Procter andGamble. On the other hand, the new coffees seem toconnect with a moregenuinepast before the concentra-tion and massification of the trade. The identificationof particularblends and varietalsrecalls the glory daysof the trade; he sale of whole beans in barrels orburlapbags recalls that past (for a present in which the "con-tainerization" in international shipping has renderedsuch bags obsolete) at the same time that it gives thelate-20th-centurygourmet shop the ambience of thelate-19th-century general store. This identification isfurthereffected with the tasteful display of old coffeemills, roasters, and brewing apparatus on the storeshelves. Coffee traders themselves share these identifi-cations. AlanRossman,of HenaUEstateGrown"Coffee,explained to WorldCoffeeand Tea in 1981:

I am a second generationcoffeeman and, throughdirectexperience, remember when there was a certain pride inthe coffee business. We used to wonder whyX n earlierdays, there were so many second generation coffeemenaround.Andit was because there was an art to coffee then.... Today, the ballgame has changed and suddenly thepassword in coffee has become 'cheaper,cheaper!'All of a sudden . . . comes along somebody who's inter-ested in quality. He doesn't care that he mayhave to sell itat twice the price of cannedcoffee, he's only interested inquality. All we're doingtoday is copying what our fathersand grandfathersdid years and years ago.... Specialtycoffee has revivedthe pride that was lost somewherealongthe line and it is the mainreason why I, who was born andraised in the coffee business, really enJoynow being partof that business. [WC&T981b:121In the same issue of WorldCoffeeand Tea, the journalenthused:

And so it seems thatthe coffee trade in the U.S. has comefull circle, returningto its roots and the uncomplicatedmarketingof coffee in bins, baxTelsand the more modernmethod of lucite containers.As they did in the early daysof coffee consumption,Americanconsumers,in ever-grow-ing numbers, are blendingtheir own coffee, grinding t athome and brewing it fresh each day. [WC&T 981b:12]Similarly,the journal notes that specialty coffees ap-peal to consumers who prefer "natural," whole,"andufreshX oods. Imagining yet another past, the samejournal nervouslytracks the latest governmentreportson the effects of caffeine or methylene chloride. But towhat extent is the new also a return?Upon what pastshave the specialty coffees actuallybuilt?



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YUPPIECOFFEESNDCLASS NTHEUNITED TATES WILLIAM OSEBERRY765

account,offeredthemsome advice.In aninterviewwiththe editors of WorldCoffeeand Tea,he commented,Coffee is a wonderfulproduct.I believe, however, that wehave got to stop selling the producton price. Wemust sellcoffee on quality,value and image. I believe coffee has apotential for this marketingapproachand I know we cando it. But we must get startednow....Once you start sellinga producton price,you endupwitha lot of money beingput into price promotions. . . and youforget the basic thingslike the fact that coffee tastes good,that it smells andlooks nice, that it's unique....We are entering the 'me' generation. The crucial ques-tions 'me' oriented consumers will ask, of all types ofproducts,are:What's n it for me? Is the product'me'?Is itconsistent with my lifestyle?Does it fill a need? Do I likehow it tastes? Whatwill it cost me? Is it necessary? CanIaffordit? Is it convenientto prepare?How will it affect myhealth?[WC&T981a:35]

In a speech to the Green Coffee Association of NewYork,Romansuggested fictitious couples and individu-als who could serve as markers of distinct marketniches and suggested that UcoffeemenXhould developdifferentcoffees to appealto specific niches. The firstcouple was UtheGrays,"a dual-incomecouple in theirmid-thirties, or whom coffee is a Uway f lifeXandwhoprefer to buy their coffee in a gourmet shop. Othersincluded UthePritchetts,"n their late fifties andwatch-ingtheirpennies, for whom price is the most importantquestion;Karen Sperling," single workingwoman inher thirties who does not want to spend much time inthe kitchenand forwhoma better instantcoffee shouldbe developed;UtheTaylors,"ntheir sixties and worriedabout caffeine, for whom better decaffeinated coffeesshould be developed;andUJoel," college student whodoes not drinkcoffee. UWe on't know yet what to doabout Joel.... Finding he right answerto thatquestionwill be the toughest, and probablythe most importanttask coffee marketers will face in the 80sX (WC&T1981a:7S77).KennethRomanwas inviting Ucoffeemen"o envi-sion a segmented rather than a mass market, and toimagine market segments in class and generationalterms. In his scheme were two groups that were to bethe targets of specialty coffee promotions-the yuppieUGrays" nd the mysterious "Joel,"who prefers softdrinks.These two segmentsmarkwhat were to becometwo strains of an emergingspecialtybusiness-the mar-keting of qualityvarietals,on one hand,and the promo-tion of flavored coffees, the equivalent of soft drinks,on another.Romanwas describing he virtuesof productdiver-sification to a trade that had grown on the basis ofstandardization.Yet the standardizationitself was abizarredevelopment,havingbeen imposedupona prod-uct thatUnaturallyXends itself to diversity.Evenduring

The process of standardizationand concentrationbegunbefore the depression was consolidatedoverthesucceeding decades, especially after WorldWar I, dur-ing which we can locate two new developments. TheElrst nvolved the creation of internationalcontrol in-struments and agreements, beginningin WorldWar IIand culminating in the creation of the InternationalCoffeeOrganizationand an InternationalCoffeeAgree-ment signed by producing and consuming countries,throughwhich export quotas were imposed upon pro-ducing countries. Though room was allowed for newproducers(especially from Africa)to enter the market,entry and participationwere controlled. With such in-struments,and with the widening productionand con-sumption of solubles, the trend toward coffee of thelowest common denominatorcontinued.The second postwar development involved thelong-term decline in consumption beginning in the1960s.Through he 1950s, consumptionwas essentiallyflat, with minor fluctuations.From 1962,one can charta consistent decline. In that year, 74.7 percent of theadultpopulation was calculated to be coffee drinkers;by 1988only50 percentdrankcoffee (see Table1). Eventhose who drank coffee were drinkingless. In 1962,averagecoffee consumptionwas 3.12 cups per day; by1980 t had dippedto 2.02cups andby 1991haddroppedto 1.75, which represented a slight increase over the1988 ow of 1.67 (WC&T 991:14).Worse, n the view ofUcoffeemen,"onsumptionwas increasinglyskewed to-ward an older set. At the beginning of the 1980s,theyworriedthat they had not been able to attractthe 20- to29-year-oldgeneration, who seemed to identify coffeedrinking with the settled ways of their parents andgrandparents.According to their calculations, 20- to29-year-oldsdrankonly 1.47cups per dayin 1980,while30- to 59-year-oldsdrank3.06 cups, and those over 60drank2.40 (WC&T 980:22).

Differentiation and the Identification ofMarket NichesThe long-termtrend toward decline was exacer-batedby the effects of the July 1975frost in Brazil,afterwhich wholesale and retailprices rose precipitously.Inresponse, various consumer groups began to call forboycotts, and coffee purchases declined sharply.Con-gressionalhearingswere calledto investigatethe coffeetrade,and the GeneralAccountingOfElce onductedanofficial inquiryandpublisheda report.At the beginningof the 1980s,then, many Ucoffee-menXhad reason to worrBr.KennethRomanJr., presi-dent of Ogilvie and Mather,a major advertisingandpublic relations firm which carriedthe MaxwellHouse



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the period of concentrationamong roasters and pack-agers, the export-import rade was organizedaroundacomplex grading hierarchy, first according to type(arabicaor robusta),then accordingto place, process-ing methods, and shape, size, and texture of the bean.Coffees are gradedfirst accordingto a hierarchyfromColombianarabica,othermilds, Brazilian, o robustas.They are traded and may be sold by the place of theiroriginor export (varietalssuch as GuatemalanAntigua,Kona, Blue Mountain,Maracaibo);once traded, theymay be blended with coffees from other locales or ofother grades. Both varietals and blends can then besubjected to differentroasts, impartingdifferent,moreor less complex aromasand tastes to the coffee. Fromthe point of productionthroughtraders, export firms,importers,warehousers,roasters, and distributors, hegrading hierarchy with significant price differentialsprevails. In theirattemptto captureand service a massmarket in the 20th century, the giant roasters hadboughttheir coffee throughthese gradingdifferentials,then proceeded to obliterate them in the productionofcoffee of the lowest commondenominator.The giants had never controlled the whole trade,however. In addition to the major roasters and theirdistribution network through grocery stores, smallerainstitutional" oasters were scattered throughoutthecountry, servicing restaurants,cafes, offices, vendors,and the like. At the beginningof the 1980s,fewer than200 roastingand processing companies operatedin theUnited States, with fourof them controlling75 percentof the trade (C&CI1982:17).In addition, a small net-work of specialty, gourmet" shops could be found,primarily n coastal cities like New Yorkand SanFran-cisco. In the retrospective view of coffeemen," theseshops beganto attractnew customersandexpand busi-ness in the wake of the 1975 freeze, when coffee pricesexpanded across the board and consumers faced withpaying $3 a poundfor tasteless coffee began searchingfor something betterX and found that aquality" offeethat used to cost three times supermarketprices wasnow only about a dollar more.This, in turn, providedstimulus for others to enterthe gourmettrade,perhaps includingspecialty coffeesas one of a range of foods in a gourmet shop. For thisexpanding numberof retailers, supply was a problem.They were dealing in small lots of a product that wasimported,warehoused, and sold in bulk, and were en-tering a trade that was highly concentrated. As thespecialty trade expanded,the critical middlemenwerethe roasters, who could develop special relationshipswith importerswillingto deal insmaller lots. The roast-ers, in turn,would supply a networkof specialty stores.Locationmattered,as a relativelydense concentrationof specialty traders,roasters, retailers, and customersdeveloped on the West Coast, especially in Seattle and

the San Francisco BayArea.The roastersbest situatedto take advantage of the situation were institutionalroasters who began to develop specialty lines as sub-sidiaries of their restaurantsupply business. These re-gional roasters, and others new to the trade, quicklybecame the control points of an expanding gourmettrade, developingnew supplies, roasts, and blends;tak-ing on regular customers among shop owners;runningUeducational" eminars to cultivate a more detailedknowledge of coffee among retailers, expecting thatthey in turn would educate their customers;and so on.An early gourmet-market dea popular with retailerswas the agourmetcoffee of the day,"sold by the cup,allowingthe retailer to drain excess inventoryand ac-quaintcustomers withdifferentblends androasts at thesame time.One of the most important difficulties for theroaster was the establishment of a regularsupply ofgreen coffee. Here the problem was less one of qualitythan of quantity: major importers and warehouserswere reluctantto breaklots into shipmentsbelow 25 to50 bags (of 60 kilogramseach), but a small to medium-sized roaster dealing with several varietals needed tobuy in lots of about 10 bags each. Whilea collection ofgreen coffee traders in the Bay Area (B. C. Ireland,E. A. Kahl,HaroldL. King,Royal Coffee) specialized inthe gourmettrade andtraded in smallerlots, New Yorktraders were slow to move into the new markets(Schoenholt 1984a:62).As late as 1988,RobertFulmerof Royal Coffee complained, aDemand or qualityhashappened faster than producers can react. The NewYork C'marketis becomingirrelevant,because it's notrepresentative of what people want" (C&CI 1988a:1S22).Although the trend still represented a very smallpercentage of total coffee sales in the UnitedStates bythe early 1980s,tradersand roasters had begunto takenotice. A scant seven months after Kenneth Romandiscussed the need to identify a segmentedmarketanddiversifycoffee products, World Coffee and Tea issueda report on "thebrowning of America,"pointing to anexponential growth in the segment of the coffee tradedevoted to specialty lines, with annual growth ratesapproaching30 to 50 percent. The journal estimatedtotal U.S. sales of specialty coffees for 1980 to be 14million pounds (WC&T 1981b:12). Over the 1980sgrowth was phenomenal: Coffee and Cocoa Interna-ttonal reported sales of 40 million pounds in 1983(C&CI 1985), after which further reports were pre-sented in value of the trade rather than the numberofbags-$330 millionin 1985(C&CI 1986),$420 millionin1986, $500 million in 1987, by which time specialtycoffee constituted 8 percent of total trade, and so on(C&CI 1988b).



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YUPPIECOFFEESNDCLASS NTHEUNITED TATES WILLIAM OSEBERRY767

The expansion of specialty coffees was coincidentwith a number of technological and commercial devel-opments that requirebrief mention. First, the contain-erization" evolution in internationalshippinghas dras-tically cut the amount of time coffee is in transit fromproducing countries to consuming countries (from 17to 10 days for a typical Santos-to-New Yorkrun), andhas transformedwarehousing practices in the UnitedStates, cutting warehouse storage times from an aver-age of six monthsto an average of 10to 14 days. Speedin transferand the development of direct and immedi-ate relationships with roasters have become critical,and the widespread use of containershas allowed dis-tributors to relocate from the coasts to interior cities,enhancing flexibility in supply and distribution (Coe1983).Changingrelationships between roasters, traders,and bankers were also involved in the gourmet boom.The combination of high inflation andinterest rates ofthe late 1970s andearly 1980saffected the wayin whichUcoffeemen" ould thinkaboutfinancing heir trade.Bythe early 1980s, banks were less willing to finance pur-chases of large lots that would be warehoused for sev-eralmonthsandencouraged theirclients to buysmallerlots and maintain lower inventories. UIt'sa differentworldnow,"MickeyGalitzineof the Bank of New Yorkcommented to WorldCoffeeand Tea (1983a:21), UandI'm not sure we can go back. People have ad,justed othis new situation and are now buying in a differentpatteIn. They'resimply used to buying ess."They were buying less, but still buying in lots thatwere large and risky enough to concern the specialtyroaster. Institutional roasters could roast, grind, andpackage large lots and not WoITy boutfreshness. Spe-cialty roasts, to be sold in whole beans, required resh-ness and had to be distributed and sold quickly. Theroastertherefore had to develop an extensive networkof retailers but was limited to particularregions be-cause of the difficulties in shippingwhole roast beansand maintainingfreshness. Here the development ofvalve packaging made it possible for roasters to keeproastedbeans freshlonger,extendingthe timeavailablefor shipping, storage, and selling. The beans could bepacked in 250-grambags for direct retail sale or in 15-or 25-pound bags for retail storage. Indeed, the deliacross the street from me buys its 43 varieties from asingle roaster in 15-poundvalve bags, transferring hecoffee to burlap bags for presentation andsale.

NewActors,NewInstitutionsThroughout he 1980s,the "qualityXegment of thecoffee market,highest inprices andprofitmargins,wasboomingwhile total coffee consumption declined.This

constitutes such a perfect response to market decline,and such an obvious response to the suggestions ofKennethRoman, hat we mightexpect a central direct-ing power UCapital,"r at least UTheCoffee Interest-"But the initiative toward specialty coffees occurredoutside of and despite the controlling interests of thegiants like General Foods, Procter and Gamble, andNestle, who ignoredthe growth of specialty coffees andseemed to regard them as a fad until they captured asignificant percentage of the market. Their reticencemight be explained by the fact that the giants were partof large food conglomerates ikely to be less threatenedby a long-termdecline in coffee consumptionthan thesmaller institutional roasters, who were forced to de-velop new markets in order to survive.This is not to say that the emergence of specialtycoffees was completely free from directionand organi-zation. Ihave pointed to some of the largercommercial,financial, and technological changes with which themove to specialty coffees was associated. In addition,the coffee trade viewed the new developments withinterest and excitement. We have seen the notice takenbytrade ournalsfromthe early 1980s.WorldCoffeeandTea began tracking developments quite closely, withfrequentreports on the trade and profiles of particularroasters or retailers. In 1984, the journal also began anirregular column, The Gourmet Zone," by DonaldSchoenholt, followed in the early 1990s by a regularcolumnwithvariouscontributors,The SpecialtyLine."Coffee and CocoaInternational viewed developmentsfroma greaterdistance but enJoyedprofilingparticulargourmet retailersfor theirreaders.Mostimportantly,agroup of roasters and retailers formed the SpecialtyCoffee Association of America(SCAA) n 1982.As withthe earlierformationof the National CoffeeAssociation(and later the InternationalCoffee Organization), heimportanceof such tradeassociations needs to be em-phasized. They provide an important directing organi-zation that can lobby the government, speak for thetrade, identify economic andpolitical trends,engage inpromotionalcampaigns,provideinformationand train-ing for entrepreneursentering the trade,and so on.In association with the National Coffee ServiceAssociation, the SCAAappealed to the PromotionFundof the InternationalCoffee Organizationandreceived a$1.6 million grant to promote specialty coffees, espe-cially among the young(WC&T 983b).The money wasfunneled through the Coffee Development Group(CDG), which promoted specialty coffees throughoutthe 1980s. One of their early activities involved jointsponsorship of coffeehouses on college campuses (Co-lumbiaUniversitybeing one of the first) at which cof-fee brewed fromspecialty roasts and blends would besold. The CDGwould specify the amount of coffee thathad to be included in each pot brewed (WC&T1988).



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768 AMERICANNTHROPOLOGISTVOL.98, NO. 4 * DECEMBER996

Some, such as the shop at the University of SouthernCalifornia, even experimented with iced cappuccino,sold in cold drink Ububblers"WC&T 989b).In addition to promotional efforts, the SCAAhaspursued other goals as well, including the dissemina-tion of informationon green market conditions and thedevelopment of networks among roasters, retailers, andtraders. By 1989, he groupheld its first convention, andeach annual convention demonstrates the phenomenalgrowth of the association. Its conventions now attractover 3,000 people, and it claims to be the largest coffeeassociation in the world.Manyof the association's members are new to thecoffee trade, and they bringwith them a formationquiteunlike that which characterizedsecond- and third-gen-eration ucoffeemen."For one thing, many begin with alack of knowledge about the basics of coffee produc-tion, processing, and marketing.This is reflected in anew tone in WorldCoffee and Tea, which increasinglyoffers articles giving basic and introductory informa-tion of various aspects of the coffee trade, recentlyadvising new entrepreneurs that historic and geo-graphic background is an essential element to a com-prehensive knowledge of coffee. If you're selling Co-lombian coffee, you should have some idea about whereColombia is located and what kinds of coffee it pro-duces" (McCormack1994:22). t is also reflected in thekinds of workshops and training sessions offered atannual conventions of the SCAA,popularly known asEspresso 101 or Roasting 101 or Brewing 101.

The presence of new entrepreneurs is also re-flected in new sets of social, political, and ethical con-cerns that would have been anathema o earlier genera-tions of coffeemen." Among hem is a growing nterestin social and environmental ssues and the creation bycoffee roasters of such organizations as Equal Ex-change and Coffee Kids,and companies like Aztec Har-vests (4owned by Mexican co-op farmers"). As thefounder of Coffee Kids, Bill Fishbein, expresses theproblem:This disparity hat exists between the coffee-growingworldand the coffee-consuming world is rooted in the centuriesand remains the true inheritance of 500 years of colonial-ism. Althoughno one in today's coffee industrycreated theexisting situation, everyone, including importers, brokers,roasters, retailers, and consumers are left with this legacyeither to perpetuate or address. [Fishbein and Cycon1992: 4]

William McAlpin, a plantation owner in Costa Rica,gives voice to an older generation that dismisses theseconcerns along the paternalistic ines one expects froma plantation owner proud of the livelihood he has pro-vided for "ourresidents,"but also observes:

I am always amused to see that many of these same people,who are involved in the final stages of selling specialtycoffee, while proclaiming that they support this or thatcharity or political action squad, are careful to avoid men-tioning that the usual mark-up by the specialty coffee tradeis from 400% to 600% of the price paid for delivered greencoffee....From the producer's point of view, it seems truly ironicthat a product that takes a year to grow, and that requiresthousands of worker hours of difficult, delicate, and oftendangerous work, should be so remarkably inflated by some-one who simply cooks and displays the coffee. [McAlpin1994:7]

In any case, both dimensions of the formation ofthe new coffee men and women find expression and aregiven direction by the SCAA.In addition to the work-shops and training seminars, one can see this in theirannual choice of a plenary speaker. At its second con-vention, held in San Francisco, the SCAAarranged agroup tour of wineries and invited a wine merchant ogive the plenary address, in which he offered advicebased on the success of a beverage that the tradejour-nals have most frequently taken as the model to beemulated. For the 1993 convention, the association in-vited Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Of hisaddress, WorldCoffee and Tea reported:Ben Cohen urged the members of the coffee industry tointegrate the 1960s values of peace and love with runningtheir businesses....Cohen pointed out that coffee is a very political commod-ity and called on the members of the special coffee industryto:* purchase coffee from the Aztec Cooperative because ahigh percentage of the money goes back to the faImers;buy it, tell your customers about it, and let them choosewhether or not they want to pay the higher price," Cohensaid.* buy organic coffees; and* participate in Coffee Kids by using a coin drop ordonating a percentage of sales.aUse these steps to build your image as a socially con-scious business," Cohen explained, Uandmake it your pointof difference in a highly competitive business." [WC&T1993:7]

Flexibilityand ConcentrationAs the smaller roasters captured the new marketniche, they expressed both surprise and concern aboutthe activities of the giants, sometimes assuming hat themarket was theirs only as long as the giants stayed out(e.g., WC&T 984:12).Some of the roasters' and retail-ers' fears were realized in September 1986 when bothGeneral Foods and A&P ntroduced specialty lines forsale in supermarkets General Foods with MaxwellHouse Private Collection and A&Pwith Eight O'Clock



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gentle art of selling the same coffee by whatever varietallabel the customer orders.One well-known trade executive states his customersunderstand that substitutions are made from time-to-timewhen varietals are unavailable. A well-known roaster/re-tailer avoids buying varietal selections, following insteadthe accepted traditionof buying or cup qualities alone. Heoffers his patrons distinctive tastes in varietal labeledblends Colombian Blend, Kenya Blend, Jamaica BlueMountainstyle, etc.Where he wholesale or retail clientele understanda mer-chant's practices and honorable intent, both the above-mentioned methods of labeling have been accepted. Theproblem arises where a merchant's intent is to mislead,through unbridleduse of a stencil machine, creating labelsjust for the sake of inventingvariety where none exists.Whereno effort or skill is used, the public is presented withcut-rate mislabeled coffees.A recent inspection of a grocer n the New Yorkarea sadlyproved a point: Virtuallyevery American roast coffee ondisplay was the same item under different abel, purchasedfrom a discount roaster offeringall Amexicanroast beans,regardless of origin, in the same $2.60 per lb. price range.[Schoenholt 1984b:39]

A second, relateddevelopment was the emergenceof coffee flavors that can besprayed on recently roastedbeans. C. Melchers and Company of Bremen beganoperating in the United States in 1982, offering an ever-expanding variety of liquidflavors for coffee and tea.Each flavor is composed of 20 to 60 anatural" nd arti-ficial" (chemical) ingredients,and Melchers is adept atdeveloping different combinations to produce "uniqueXflavors for particular roasters (WC& 1983c:16, 18).Viewing this trend, LarryKramerof Van CortlandCof-fee observed, aSpecialtycoffee is becoming the BaskinRobbins of the specialty food trade." Actually, as wehave seen, it turned out that Ben and Jerry'swould havebeen more to the point. Some roasters and retailersrefused to deal in such coffees. Complained PaulKatzeff of Thanksgiving Coffee, "People who drinkgood coffee drink t because they env y the flavor of realcoffee.... I doubt that flavoredcoffees bring in drink-ers who never drank coffee before" (WC&T1982:20).Despite such expressions of dismay, the move towardflavored coffees has continued apace; roasters and re-tailers alike recognize that flavorsare popular, hat theyare attracting new coffee drinkers, especially amongthe aformer oft drinkgeneration" hat had seemed lostto coffee consumption at the beginning of the1980s KennethRoman'sUJoel," bout whom "wedon'tknow yet what to do." Increasingly popular in bothretail shops and espresso bars are flavored syrups that,in addition to impartingan apparentuItalian" legance,grant the small retailer more flexibility. A smallernumber of blends, varietals, and roasts can be kept in

Royale Gourmet Bean in 14 vatieties, aall designed toappeal to the former soft dtink generation."At the time,KarinBrown of General Foods commented, UGourmetis the fastest-growing segment of the market largeenough to make sense for General Foods' entry now"(C&CI1986:9).By the time the giants began to enter the market,the groundwork for a certain kind of standardizationand concentration among the newcomers had alreadybeen laid. In coastal cities, the isolated gourmet foodshop was already competing with chains of gourmetshops operating in minimalls, which could if theychose, develop their own roasting capacities. In addi-tion, some roasters (the best known and most aggres-sive of which has been Starbucksof Seattle) had begunto move beyond regional distiibution chains and de-velop national markets. While structuralchanges, fromthe technologies of shipping, warehousing,and packag-ing to the credit policies of banks, were signiElcant,weneed to also consider some of the characteristicsof thegourmet beans themselves.As the gourmet trade expanded, participantsviewed two new developments with excitement oralarm, depending on their respective commitment totraditional notions of Uquality-" s noted above, thequalityof coffee anaturally" aries according to severalcriteria type of coffee tree and location of cultivation(varietals), method of processing, size and texture ofbean, and degree of roasting. With he expansion of thespecialty trade,two new modes of discriminationwereintroduced "styles"and "flavors."Because the avail-ability of particularvarietals is uncertain (a hurricanehits Jamaica, wiping out Blue Mountain coffee, or atradercannot provide KenyaAA n lots small enough fora particularroaster because largerroasters can outcom-pete, and so on), and the price of varietals fluctuatesaccordingly, roasters attempt to develop blends thatallow them flexibility in using a number of vaxietalsinterchangeably.uPeter'sBlend"or UHouseBlendX aysnothing about where the coffee comes from, allowingthe roaster or retailer near perfect flexibility, but soagain does the sale of "Mocha tyle" or ;'BlueMountainstyle." At the beginning of this trend, J. Gill Brocken-brough Jr. of First Colony Coffee and Tea complained,"It s rrzore nd more difElcultall the time to Emd hegreen coffee we need.... But there really is no suchthing as a 'style'of coffee, either it ts or it isn't from aparticularorigin" WC& 1981b: 6). DonaldSchoenholtof Gillies 1840elaborated in his column, zTheGourmetZone," n WorldCoffee and Tea:

In the past I have pointed out the practice of labeling'varietals' with the code word 'style,' a habit which hascome to replace good judgment too often these days. Butnow it appears we have a new phenomenon added to thegood-humoreddiversity of specialty coffee labeling: the



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States,and coffee wouldthereforebe one of many oodsthroughwhich one could examine the transformationindustrializationwrought in such broad areas as thestructureof cities, the remakingof work and domesticlife and organization,or more speciElcconcerns, suchas the rise of advertising or the supermarket.Here,Jimenez'swork on coffee in the United States comple-ments Mintz'swork on sugar in England (1985). Yetcoffee and sugarbelong to a small subset of commodi-ties that can illuminate capitalist transformationsinotherways inthat they linkconsumptionzones (andtherise of workingand middle classes that consumed theparticularproducts in ever increasing numbers) andproductionzones in LatinAmerica,the Caribbean,Af-rica,andAsia (andthe peasants, slaves, andotherruraltoilers who grew, cut, or picked the products). Forthese commodities once inadequatelytermed dessertfoods"and now increasinglycalled drug foods,"SidneyMintz offers a more axTestingphrase coffee, sugar,tea, and chocolate were proletarian hunger killersX(1979).Mightwe, in turn, now consider coffee to be thebeverage of postmodernism?That is, can an examina-tion of shifts in the marketingand consumptionof onecommodityprovidean angle of vision on a widerset ofsocial andculturalformationsand the bravenew worldof which they are a part? That I can walk across thestreet andchoose amonga seeminglyendless varietyofcheeses, beers, waters, teas, and coffees places me in anew relationshipto the world: I can consume a bit ofSumatra,Darjeeling,France, and Mexico in my home,perhapsat the same meal. Such vaxietystands in starkcontrast to the stolid, boring axTay f goods availabletwo decades ago. We live now in an emerging era ofvariety and choice, and the revolutionin consumptionseems to indicate, and in some ways initiate,a revolu-tion in production.As with coffee, so with other foodproducts: the moves toward product diversificationoften came not fromthe established anddominantcor-porationsbut fromindependentswhose initiativeshaveundercutandundermined he establishedpracticesandmarketshare of those corporations.Wemightsee thisas the extension of the Apple Computermodel of en-trepreneurialism o other realms.DavidHarveyelaborates:

The marketplace has always been an 'emporiumof styles'... but the food market, just to take one example, nowlooks very different from what it was twenty years ago.Kenyanharicot beans, Californiancelery and avocados,North African potatoes, Canadian apples, and Chileangrapes all sit side by side in a British supermarket.Thisvariety also makes for a proliferationof culinarystyles,even amongthe relativelypoor....Thewhole world'scuisine is now assembledin one placein almostexactly the same way that the world'sgeographi-

stock, along with a few bottles of syrup,andcustomerscan add or mix their own flavors.Style and flavor can, in turn,be combined in vari-ous ways, so that one can buy Blue Mountainstylevanilia or almond, Mocha style chocolate cream oramaretto,and so on. If we furthercombine with differ-ent roasts, throw in the possibility of caffeinated orwater process decaffeinated, the possibilities for vari-ety arealmostendless. Critically mportant,however, isthat the varietyis controllable. To the extent thatroast-ers andretailersareable to create criteriaof variabilityandqualitythat are removedfromthe anatural"harac-teristics and qualities of the coffee beans themselves,they generate for themselves extraordinary lexibility.In extreme cases, they uinventvariety where none ex-ists," as Schoenholt complains. Here we find a con-sumer who acts and feels like a gourmetbut is buyingcoffee that is not far removed from Maxwell HousePrivateCollection. More generally,they create, define,and control their own forms of variety. Specialty cof-feemen" constantly emulate and consult wine mer-chants andhope thatconsumerswill select coffee withthe same discrimination and willingness to spendmoney they demonstrate when buying wine, but theBaskinRobbins(or Ben andJerry's)model may not betoo much of an exaggeration.Ironically,controllablevarietyalso makes the spe-cialty tradesubject to concentration,whetherfromtheoutside as giants create their own UPrivateCollectionXand aRoyaleGourmetBean" ines or frominternaldif-ferentiation, expansion, and concentration amongsmallerroasters. Variety, oo, can be standardized,es-pecially if the varieties have little to do with natural"characteristics.

The Beverage of Postmodernism?In his study of the transformationof coffee produc-tion andconsumption n the early20thcentury,MichaelJimenez suggests that coffee is the beverage of U.S.capitalism. Indeed, as we consider the place of coffeeas a beverage of choice in working-and middle-class

homes and in factory canteens, the role of coffee trad-ers in the emergence of a practical internationalism,andthe processes of standardization ndconcentrationthat restructured the coffee market, we see that thecoffee tradewas subjectto andparticipant n the sameprocesses that madea capitalistworld.This is not to suggest, of course, that coffee existsin some sort of uniquerelationshipwith capitalism,butthat it provides a windowthroughwhich we can view arange of relationships and social transformations.Theprocesses of standardization ndindustrializationwerecommon to many foods in the 20th-century United



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cal complexity is nightlyreduced to a series of images ona static television screen. This same phenomenon is ex-ploited in entertainmentpalaces like Epcot and Disney-world; t becomes possible, as the U.S. commercialsput it,'to experience the Old Worldfor a day without actuallyhavingto go there.'Thegeneral implication s thatthroughthe experience of everythingfromfood, to culinaryhabits,music, television, entertainment, and cinema, it is nowpossible to experience the world'sgeographyvicariously,as asimulacrum.Theinterweavingof simulacra ndaily ifebrings together different worlds (of commodities) in thesame space and time. But it does so in such a way as toconceal almost perfectly any trace of origin, of the labourprocesses that produced them, or of the social relationsimplicated in theirproduction. [1989:299, 00]

A more complete understandingof coffee market-ing and consumption in the 1980s and 1990s requiresthat we make some attempt to examine the world ofproduction concealed by the emporium of styles. Wemightbegin by maintainingan understandingof coffeeas Uthebeverage of United States capitalism"but plac-ing the history of that beverage within two periods ofcapitalistaccumulation.In DavidHarvey'sview, muchof 20th-century api-talismwas dominatedby a "Fordist" egime of accumu-lation;since the mid-1970sa new regime has emerged,which he labels "flexible accumulation."The Fordistregime can be seen to begin in 1914,withthe impositionof assembly line production, and it has dominated thepost-World War II period. The Fordist regime wasfounded on mass production and industrial modes oforganization,based in a few key industries (steel, oil,petrochemicals, automobiles), characterized by thepresence of both organizedmanagementandorganizedlabor with negotiated, relatively stable pacts betweenthem. These industries, in turn, were subject to stateregulation and protection of markets and resources,and they producedstandardizedcommoditiesfor massmarkets. With the financial crises of the 1970s, thestabilities of the Fordist regime came to be seen asrigidities.Harveysees the regime of flexible accumula-tion emerging n partialresponse. Hisdescriptionof theinnovations characteristic of flexible accumulationconcentrates on many features that we have alreadyencountered n ourdiscussion of specialtycoffees theidentiElcation f specialized marketniches and the pro-duction of goods for those niches as opposed to theemphasis on mass-marketstandardizedproducts; thedownsizing of plants and production processes; theshrinking of inventories so that producers purchasesmallerquantitiesandpracticejust-in-timeproduction;the revolution in shipping and warehousingtechnolo-gies to cut shippingtimes; the reconfigurationof finan-cial markets;and so on.

In this regard,it is interesting to place the periodconsidered by Jimenezand the period examinedin thisessay next to each other. Both concetn decades thatsaw, if we follow Harvey'sanalysis, experimentationwith new regimes of accumulation.But if we return toa history more speciElc o coffee, both also began witha perceived problem-stagnation in consumption n thefirst, long-termdecline in the second. Both began withevident consumer dissatisfaction and governmental n-vestigation (in the form of congressional hearings). Inboth, the coffee trade, in the individualactions of itsfragmentedmembers and in the programsof its direct-ing centers, devised strategies to respondto perceivedcrises that, as it happens, neatly correspond with theforms, methods, and relations of emergingregimes ofaccumulation.As Ivisit the gourmetshop, it mightbe a bit discon-certing to know thatI have been so clearlytargeted asa memberof a class andgeneration, hat theburlapbagsorminibarrels, he styles andflavors of coffee, the offerof a ugourmet offee of the day,"have been designed toappeal to me and others in my market niche. But suchare the circumstances surrounding my freedom ofchoice. In an influential essay on the global culturaleconomy, Arjun Appaduraihas suggested the emer-gence of a new afetishismof the consumer"and claimsthat commodityflows and marketingstrategies amask.. . the real seat of agency, which is not the consumerbut the producer and the many forces that constituteproduction.... The consumer is consistently helped tobelieve that he or she is anactor,where in fact he orsheis at best a chooser" (1990:307). While I think Ap-padurai's larger claims regardingthe radical disjunc-ture between the present global culturaleconomy andearlier moments and forms require careful and skepti-cal analysis (Roseberry 1992), the recent history ofcoffee marketingandconsumptionseems to supporthisunderstandingof consumer fetishism.That is to say, my newfound freedom to choose,and the taste and discriminationI cultivate, have beenshaped by tradersand marketersresponding to a long-term decline in sales with a move toward market seg-mentation along class and generational lines. While Iwas thinking of myself as me, KennethRomansaw meas one of "theGrays."How manyreaders of this essayhave been acting like UJoels"? his is not, of course, tosay that we enter the market as mere automatons;clearly, we have and exercise choices, and we (appar-ently) have more things to choose from than we oncedid. But we exercise those choices in a world of struc-tured relationships, and part of what those relation-ships structure (or shape) is both the arena and theprocess of choice itself.Another, inescapable part of that world of struc-tured relationships is a set of connections with the



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world of production and of producers. My vicariousexperience of the world's geography s notjust a simu-lacrum; it depends upon a quite real, if mediated andunacknowledged, relationship with the rural toilerswithout whom my choice could not be exercised. Howhas the brave new world of choice and flexibility af-fected them?For both Fordist and flexible accumulation re-gimes, the mode of mobilizing labor is critical theimportanceof a stable core of organized aborand laborrelations under Fordism and its virtual opposite underflexible accumulation,which seems to remove labor asmuch as possible from core to peripheral(temporary,seasonal, occasional, or contracted)laborsupplies thatcan be engaged and disengagedas needed. Some of theinnovations that I have discussed in relation to thecoffee market have involved such shifts in labor rela-tions (e.g., the move toward containerization n interna-tional shipping,whichrevolutionizeddistribution n theUnited States and allowed importers to bypass thedocks and warehouses of coastal cities, cutting theneed for labor andthe power of the unionsof longshore-men and warehousemen).As we turn fromthe United States to the manifoldpoints of production, we find that the changes can bequite dramatic, though their shape and consequencesremain uncertain and can only be suggested here.Throughoutthe post-World War II period, the coffeetrade was regulated by a series of internationalcoffeeagreements, the first of which was the Pan Americanagreement during the war, and the longest lasting ofwhich was the InternationalCoffee Agreement (ICA)administered by the InternationalCoffee Organization(ICO), formed in 1963. Throughthe agreements, pro-ducing and consumingcountries submittedto a seriesof quotas that could be adjusted and even suspendedfrom year to year as particularcountries suffered hur-ricanes, droughts,or frosts or other countries enteredthe marketand signed the agreement but that none-theless imposed a series of (let us call them Fordist)rigidities on internationaltrade. They also provided aseries of protections for individualproducingcountriesand regions, regulatingboth prices (which fluctuatedbut with highs and lows that were less dramatic) andmarketshare.The agreements were never especially popularamong coffeemen," who profess a free trade philoso-phy, andthey encountered ncreasing opposition in the1980s.Specialty traderswantedto developnew sourcesof supply, emphasizing arabicas and deemphasizingrobustas,which hadan importantplace in mass-marketblends and soluble (instant) coffees but found littleacceptance in specialty markets.Unfortunately or thespecialty traders, the percentages of arabicas androbustas offered on the worldmarketwere fixed by the

ICA;fortunately for robusta producers, their liveli-hoods were relatively protected by that same agree-ment.The ICAwas due for renewal andextension in 1989,but the various membersof the ICOencountereddiffi-culties in resolving their differences. Two countrieswere especially insistent on their needs Brazil,whichwanted to maintain ts 30 percent share,and the UnitedStates, which pressed two concerns: (1) the trouble-some practice among producingcountries of discount-ing prices to nonmemberconsuming countries (essen-tiallythose withinthe then-existing socialist bloc), and(2) the inflexibility of the quotas that, they argued,prevented tradersand consumers fromacquiringmoreof the quality arabicas. Because the differences couldnot be resolved, the ICA was suspended in mid-1989,usheringin a free market in coffee for the first time indecades.The immediate effects were dramaticfor produc-ing countries. Prices plummeted and quickly reached,in constant dollarterms, historic lows. Exportingcoun-tries that could do so expanded exports in an attemptto maintain income levels in the face of declining unitprices, and importers took advantage of the low pricesand expanded stocks. In addition to the generalpricedecline, robusta producers were especially disadvan-taged, as prices for robusta dipped below $.50 perpoundand farmersfaced a world market hat no longerwanted their product. Robusta is grown primarily inAfrica,and Africanproducers and economies were dev-astated.By 1993, underthe leadership of Braziland Colom-bia, along with CentralAmericanarabicaproducers, acoffee retention plan was signed that called for theremoval of up to 20 percent of production by partici-pants in the plan. The plan was the first step toward anew Association of Coffee Producing Countries inwhich both LatinAmerican and Africancountries par-ticipated, and it has succeeded in spurringa price re-covery. It remains a fragile coalition, however, and bythe time it had been formed the markethad been com-pletely restructured.Mostimportantly,because marketprices had fallen below the level of production costs,

only the strong those who could weather a prolongeddepression-survived. The weak disappeared romthecoffee scene.The free market vastly increased the flexibility ofcoffee traders and "peripheralized"he labor of coffeegrowersin a direct and immediateway. My freedomtochoose in the deli across the street orthe gourmetshopa few blocks away is implicatedwith the coffee trader'sfreedom to cut off the supply (and thereforethe productof the laborer) from, say, Uganda or the IvoryCoast.Tothe extent that "coffeemen"have been successful increating styles, so that I think I am drinkingcoffee from



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YUPPIECOFFEESNDCLASS N THEUNITED TATES / WILLIAM OSEBERRY773

gender differentiation, but each of the segments wasimplicitly white. Theorists of niche marketing havesince gone much further in dividing national popula-tions into class, racial, ethnic, and generationalgroupsthan Romanwould have imagined in the early 1980s, asbooks like lThve luste7>ng f Amertca(Weiss 1988)make clear.That these distinctions, howevercrude, arebeing made, and that they work for the purposes forwhich they are intended, is worth some reflection.The point, of course, is that when market strate-gists imagine a class and generational map that in-cludes people like athe Grays"and UJoel,"hey are nottrying to create categories out of thin air. They aredoing for different purposes what sociologists andanthropologistsused to do: trying to describe a socialand cultural reality. The imagined map works only ifthere are indeed such groups aout there,' so to speak,and that the map needs to work is the whole point.Thatthere is a complex relationshipbetween classand food consumption is often remarked, first in theobvious sense that particular groups occupy differen-tial market situations in terms of their ability to pur-chase certain foods, and second in the uses variousgroupsmake of foods and food preferences in markingthemselves as distinctive from or in some sense likeother groups.In the case of specialty coffee, one of itsinteresting features is that it is not,or is not meant tobe, a aproletarian ungerkiller."Looking urtherafield,it is worth comment that the other proletarianhungerkillers of the 19th and 20th centuries with the excep-tion of sugar,which does not lend itself to such multipledistinctions except in combination with other sub-stances are also caught up in the move towardvarietyand at least the illusion of quality. In one sense thissignalsthe return o "dessertfood" status, butthere areother senses that need to be considered.The original market segment toward which spe-cialty coffee, tea, and chocolate were directedwas thatof "the Grays" urban, urbane, professional men andwomen who distinguished themselves through con-sumption and who consumed or hoped to consumevarietyand quality,as well as quantity. f they fashionedthemselves through consumption, an interesting fea-

ture of the movement is that among the commoditiesinwhich they demanded variety and quality were the oldproletarianhunger killers. In doing so, they almost cer-tainly did not imagine themselves in connection eitherwith proletariansor with the rural oilers who grew, cut,or picked what the yuppies chose to consume.The identiElcations hey were makingwere rathermore complex and may connect with the commodities'Uprehistory,"s it were, representinga kindof preindus-trial nostalgia. Each of the proletarian hunger killersentered European social history as expensive goodsfrom exotic locales, affordable and consumableonly by

a particular place but the coffee need not have anyactual association with that place, I will not even beaware of the processes of connection and disconnec-tion in which I am participating.The beverage of U.S.capitalism," ndeed!

ConclusionResolution of the issues raised by this analysiswould take us beyond our sources. My aim is to drawout certain implications and perspectives resultingfrom the angle of vision pursued herein, but also topoint toward questions and perspectives that could bepursued in supplementaryand complementaryanaly-ses other chapters, so to speak.This essay's perspective on the shaping of markettrends and taste may raise the specter of manipulation

by unseen, butpowerful, forces. In an importantdiscus-sion of the FrankfurtSchool's approach to culture in-dustries in general and to consumptionpatterns in par-ticular, Stephen Mennell observes:The problemwith the use of words like amanipulation" ythe FrankfurtSchool and other critics is that it suggeststhat those in powerful positions in industry the cultureindustry or the food and cateringindustriesonsciouslyand with malevolentintent set out to persuade people thatthey need and like products of inferior or harmful quality.It fails to draw attention to the unplanned, unintended,vicious spiral through which supply and demand are usu-ally linked. [1996:321]

There is, of course, plenty of evidence from thetrade journals that conscious action on the part of arange of actors in the coffee trade to persuade peoplethat they need and like certainproducts leaving asidethe questionof intent and the qualityof the products isprectsely what they do. But it is also clear from thesources that they do not act in concert, that there is nosingle controllinginterest (despite obvious power rela-tions), that therehas been ample room for new interestsand actors, thatthese actors, big and small, often do notknow what they are doing, and that in their bumblingexperimentation hey have stumbled on some strategiesthat work. They work not because there is a manipu-lable mass out there waiting to be told what to drinkbutbecause there is a complex, if speciElc, intersectionbetween the shaping actions of various actors in thecoffee trade and the needs, tastes, and desires of par-ticular groups of consumers and potential consumers.We gain access to that intersection by means of adiscussion of class. We have seen that Kenneth Romanpreached marketsegmentation along class and genera-tional lines. His own suggestion of segments was rela-tively simple, even crude- divided by very broad dis-tinctions of class and generation, with some sense of



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vember 1992. I thankAshrafGhanifor invitingme to partici-pate in the session and RichardFox for his astute commen-tary. I have also benefited from a stimulating discussionamong sociologists and anthropologistsat the UniversityofCaliforniaat SantaBarbara,orwhichI thankElvinHatchandRoger Friedland,and a discussion among historians at theState University of New Yorkat Stony Brook, for which Ithank Brooke Larsonand Paul Gootenberg.For their usefulsuggestions, I thankas well the reviewers forAmerican An-thropologistandTalalAsad,KateCrehan,Nicole Polier,Deb-orahPoole, RaynaRapp,andKamalaVisweswaran.

References CitedAppadurai,Arjun1990 Disjunctureand Difference in the Global CulturalEconomy.Theory,Cultureand Society 7:295-310.Coe, Kevin1983 Changes in Store. Coffee and Cocoa International

10(5):39-41.C&CICoffee and CocoaInternational)1982 High Hopes for the Promotion Drive. Coffee andCocoa International9(2):14-17.1985 MajorGrowthSeen forGourmetCoffeeMarket.Cof-fee and Cocoa International12(1):5.1986 Giants Clash in Specialty Brands War.Coffee andCocoa International13(5):9.1988a The CaliforniaTrade:A West Coast View. Coffeeand Cocoa International15(5):18-22.1988b $500m Gourmet Market to Expand, Says Study.Coffee and Cocoa International15(6):6.Fishbein,Bill, and Dean Cycon1992 Coffee Kids. WorldCoffee and Tea, October:14-15,28.Goody,Jack1982 Cooking,Cuisine,andClass:A Study n ComparativeSociology. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.Harvey,David1989 The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: BasilBlackwell.Jimenez,Michael1995 FromPlantation o Cup:Coffeeand CapitalismntheUnitedStates, 1830-1930.n Coffee, Society, andPowerin LatinAmerica.WilliamRoseberry,Lowell Gudmund-son, and MarioSamperKutschbach,eds. Pp. 38-64.Bal-timore,MD:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress.

McAlpin,WilliamJ.1994 Coffee and the Socially Concerned. WorldCoffeeand Tea,July:S7.McColmack,Tim1994 Teaching Consumers about Coffee. World Coffeeand Tea,July: 21-23.Mennell,Stephen1996 All Mannersof Food: Eating and Taste in Englandand France from the MiddleAges to the Present. 2ndedition. Urbana:Universityof Illinois Press.Mintz,Sidney1979 Time, Sugar, and Sweetness. MarxistPerspectives2:5S73.

a privileged few, not in homes but in the courts, or,increasingly in the 17th and 18th centuries, in coffeehouses (Schivelbusch 1992;Ukers 1935).Theybecameproletarianhungerkillers as their costs of production,processing, and shippingdropped, as availablequanti-ties increased dramatically,and as they became itemsof domestic and routine consumption. The class andculturalidentiElcationof this yuppie segment, then, isnot so much bourgeois as courtly, genteel, cosmopoli-tan. It could be seen to represent an attemptto re-cre-ate, throughconsumption, a time before mass societyand mass consumption. It could be seen, then, as asymbolic inversion of the very economic and politicalforces through which this particular class segmentcame into existence. Here,close attentionto class-con-ditionedpatterns of consumption can provideanotherwindow onto the culturalhistory of U.S. capitalism.But the story does not end here. Over the pastdecade, the consumptionof yuppie coffees has brokenfree from its originalmarketsegment as the coffees aremore widely available in supermarketsand shoppingmallsand aremore widely consumed.Wehaveseen thatthe processes of productionand distributionhavebeensubject to concentrationand centralization romaboveand below as MaxwellHouse and EightO'ClockCoffeehave introducedgourmetcoffees and as new chains asdifferent from each other as Starbucks and GloriaJean's move into central positions at the coffee shopend. This movement, in which a class-conditionedpro-cess of marketing, promotion, and consumption es-capes class locations, and apparentvarietyand qualityare standardizedand mass-marketed,has obvious lim-its. Gourmet coffees can be standardized,and theirprocesses of production and marketingconcentrated,but it is unlikely that these coffees will ever becometrulymass-market offees. Theircontinuedsuccess willdependuponthe processes of social and culturaldiffer-entiation they mark, even as the social locations ofgroups of consumers are blurred. It will also dependupon the continued existence, at home and abroad,ofa world of exploitative relationships, evidenced in thesocial relations throughwhich coffee is produced,theengagementand disengagementof coffee-producing e-gions under free-marketconditions, and the processesof standardizationandconcentrationto whichgourmetcoffee productionand marketinghave been subjected.Coffee remains, as Ben Cohen expressed it, a verypolitical commodity."Notes

Acknowledgments.An early version of this article was pre-sented at the session Histories of Commodification: Papersin Honor of Sidney Mintz," at the 91st Annual Meeting of theAmerican Anthropological Association, San Francisco, No-



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1985 Sweetness andPower:The Place of Sugar n ModernHistoxy.New York:Viking.Roseberry,William1992 Multiculturalism ndthe Challengeof Anthropology.Social Research59:841-858.Schivelbusch,Wolfgang1992 Tastes of Paradise:ASocial Historyof Spices, Stimu-lants, and Intoxicants.New York:Vintage.Schoenholt, Donald N.1984a The GourmetZone.WorldCoffeeand Tea,Septem-ber:62-63.1984b The GourmetZone. WorldCoffee andTea, Novem-ber: 39.Ukers, W. H.1935 AllaboutCoffee.2ndedition.New York:The TeaandCoffee TradeJournalCompany.Weiss,MichaelJ.1988 The Clusteringof America.New York:HarperandRow.WC&TWorldCoffee and Tea)1980 U.S. Coffee DrinkingSlips after Slight Gain;YoungStill Not Drinking.WorldCoffee and Tea, November:21-22.1981a Ad ManCautionsCoffee Men o ModernizeCoffee'sImage;Sees Coffee as Drink of '80s. WorldCoffee andTea,January:35, 7S78.

1981b America's Coffee Renaissance Explodes with Ex-citement as SpecialtyCoffeeTradeBooms.WorldCoffeeandTea,August:10-15.1982 SpecialtyCoffee '82:A Lookat Some Trends.WorldCoffee andTea August:16-28.1983a Bankers Cite Changes in Coffee Business Due toWorld Economy. World Coffee and Tea, November:20-22.1983b CDGReceives ICO Grant:Specialty Coffee TaskForce Formed.WorldCoffee andTea, August:11.1983c Coffee, Tea FlavoringsPlayImportantRole in U.S.GourmetScene. WorldCoffee and Tea, August:16-18.1984 Quality,Fresh Product Keep Sales Booming in theGourmetSegment.WorldCoffee and Tea,August:8-14.1988 College Coffeehouses Flourish. World Coffee andTea, August:10.1989a UnitedStates of America,PercentageDrinkingCof-fee, 1962 to 1988.WorldCoffee and Tea, March:14.1989b Decaffeinated and Soluble ConstantlyExperimentto ImproveMarketShare.WorldCoffee andTea,March:11-15.1991 Depressed Prices Lead to Continued Building ofStocks byConsumers.WorldCoffee andTea,September:12-16.1993 SCAA '93-The Largest Coffee Event in History!WorldCoffee and Tea,June: 6-7.

The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States

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