Morning coffee is a ritual. Perhaps, as the day greets you, you pad softly into into your kitchen and, as you wipe the the sleep from your eyes, carefully measure out your expensive, dark-roasted whole beans, grind them just so, and transfer them to your French press. After you gently top off the glass carafe with filtered 200-degree water, you set a timer for five minutes and expectantly reach for your favorite mug. In just a few short moments, expertly brewed ambrosia will be yours for the sipping.
Or, more likely, you act like a true American and toss some pre-ground, plastic-container Folgers into a plain ol’ drip coffeemaker, hit the on switch, and chug down some sub-standard, slightly bitter brew before rushing out the door. And, goddamnit, you’ll like it.
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No, really, you will. According to new data from market research firm Euromonitor, Americans love bad coffee. In spite of evidence to the contrary—the proliferation, in recent years, of craft coffee shops such as Blue Bottle and Intelligentsia—Euromonitor’s data shows that overall, American tastes run towards pre-ground beans from brands such as Maxwell House. If we’re grabbing our joe to go, we’ll likely hit up a chain store such as (of course) Starbucks or its fierce competitor, Dunkin’ Donuts.
Our love of Dancing with the Stars and The Voice notwithstanding, Americans’ predilection for crappy coffee can’t necessarily be chalked up to our poor taste. More likely, as Euromonitor’s Howard Telford told The Washington Post, it’s the squeeze on our wallets that’s fuelling our Nespresso habit.
“Price is important because if you can’t afford it, you can’t buy it,” he said.
Even more important to coffee swillers is convenience: if it takes too long to prepare, we don’t want it. Perhaps the most shocking revelation to be found in Euromonitor’s report is the absolutely staggering growth of the K-Cup, those lightning-fast, pre-filled pods whose name hews dangerously close to that of a feminine hygiene product. Over the past ten years, coffee pod sales have increased by 138,324 percent; in 2014, annual sales reached $4 billion. Keurig, the producer of K-Cups, now controls more than 20 percent of the US coffee market.
“Convenience is the one thing that’s really changing trends these days,” Telford said of the rise of the coffee pod. (Mother Earth’s response might be something more along the lines of, “Dear God, why?!” as the plastic cups are piling up in landfills at a highly destructive rate.)
Americans’ preference for inexpensive, easy-to-find coffee closely mirrors our love for inexpensive, easy-to-find beer. Budweiser remains the country’s top-selling brew, with 2013 sales exceeding $8 trillion. Much as Bud capitalized on its “macro” status in its recent Super Bowl ad, commercials for low-end coffees tend to hype the brews’ accessibility: think of DD’s “America Runs on Dunkin” campaign, or take a gander at this recent example from Maxwell House:
If there’s anything Americans love, it’s gr—… we mean, good, coffee.
