The Coffee Connection
Seeking to advance the quality of coffee in Boston to what he was accustomed to in California, Howell began to educate himself about the cultivation, processing, roasting and brewing of fine coffees. He founded The Coffee Connection which opened its first retail store in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1975 serving coffee drinks and selling whole-bean coffee and coffee-making paraphernalia. Howell approached his coffee slightly differently than Peet and the others in the West. Whereas West Coast coffee was predicated on a rich, strong, dark roast, Howell believed that a light "cinnamon roast" was better suited to bringing out the nuanced flavors of high-quality coffee beans which he compared to the subtle flavor characteristics of fine wine. He also promulgated the notion of "single-origin" or "single-estate" coffees as opposed to beans blended from multiple sources. Howell worked to develop relationships with various coffee plantations the world over, overseeing the entire process from the selection of the beans to roasting and cupping. As coffee loses its potency gradually (from exposure to oxygen) from the time it is roasted, Howell instituted a policy of roast-dating his coffee beans. Coffee that was unsold after seven days was donated to charity. Coffee drinkers in Massachusetts respond enthusiastically to his products. By the 1990s The Coffee Connection had grown into a chain of 24 company-owned stores in the Boston area.
Read more about this topic: George Howell (entrepreneur)
Famous quotes containing the words coffee and/or connection:
“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)