Counting on Coffee Lovers

New York Times
November 29, 2001

By SARAH KERSHAW

Hong Park runs a greengrocery on Prince Street in Manhattan , in a land of lattes, fancy beans and chic cafes, on the front line of a raging battle for the coffee customer.

His coffee was mud, and he knew it. It was, as a nevertheless loyal coffee customer at 40 Prince Farm put it, "only slightly better than your classic burned, stale New York deli coffee."

But that was two months ago. Now, in a quiet countertop revolution that could forever change the famously bad taste of New York deli coffee, Mr. Park, along with 30 other delis and grocers so far, has replaced the low-end coffee he bought at wholesale prices and brewed for seven years with new beans from Queens .

Kudo Beans, roasted, ground and packaged in a small plant in the back of a cafe in Ozone Park , are slightly more expensive than what Mr. Park and the other merchants were buying. But Mr. Park said that coffee sales had more than doubled since he began selling the new brew, charging 85 cents for a 10- ounce cup, 15 cents more per cup. And coffee customers almost invariably buy something else, whether it's a pack of chewing gum or a sandwich and chips, he said.

"Helping a lot," Mr. Park said of the impact of coffee sales on his business, which has been hurting for several years.

Mr. Park spent $30,000, the biggest investment he has made since opening the store, to renovate the front of his store, he said. He sanded and refinished the floor, added a large display of different Kudo Beans blends in flashy plastic canisters and another of fresh sandwiches. He replaced the old coffee area on top of a glass deli counter with an elaborate coffee station, featuring flavored coffees and a cappuccino machine that bears a sign saying, "Real Cappuccino." Then he put a neon sign in his store window that says "Kudo Beans."

The roasting company, which was started eight months ago as an offshoot of Dallis Brothers Coffee, a national concern that now shares the Ozone Park site with Kudo Beans, has made its first foray into the New York City coffee market with a focus on Korean-owned greengrocers and delis like Mr. Park's.

With supermarkets, Starbucks and other major coffee and sandwich chains rapidly moving into New York City, the grocers have seen their business drop in the last five years, by about 30 percent, according to the Korean- American Grocers Association of New York, which has about 2,500 members in the five boroughs. And after trying a host of other changes, adding specialty foods to the shelves and renovating the stores to compete, they have now pinned their hopes on coffee.

"We've been trying to get some items, such as gourmet food and organic food," said Chris Choi, secretary general of the association. "But somehow it's not enough to fight back against the chain stores. So last year, we started to think about some other item to add to our stores."

He said that many stores, especially smaller ones, were reluctant to pay more for coffee or invest in cappuccino machines or even neon signs and Kudo Beans cups. "They were saying coffee is coffee, but they weren't realizing that the city people, their life has been changed. They like to go to have expensive coffee and dessert. They don't want that kind of leftover coffee."

Mr. Choi had met Jeff S. Ryu, cafe concept director for Kudo Beans, when they were college students, and he knew Mr. Ryu later went into the coffee business. So the two discussed the possibility of upgrading deli and greengrocer coffee, and the association soon began organizing the effort to put Kudo Beans into its member stores.

One of Mr. Ryu's primary roles is advising the stores about how to make their coffee stations, or what he calls "coffee stages," more physically appealing. "We've got to give them all the weapons they need, the best coffee, the marketing materials and the training," Mr. Ryu said.

He added: "Coffee is a passionate item. If you get used to our coffee, you'll keep coming back for it."

One Manhattan deli owner, Sarah Song, opened her store, on West 18th Street , three weeks ago and immediately began serving Kudo Beans coffee. She said she was so pleased with the coffee that she decided to name the new deli "Kudos." (Kudo Beans said she could use the name as long as she called the store Kudos, not Kudo or Kudo's.)

Owners and other employees of stores selling Kudo Beans are invited to the cafe and roasting plant in Queens for training on cappuccino machines and to view the roasting, grinding and flavoring of the coffee beans. There is also tasting of the various blends, including 100 percent Nicaraguan, Mocha Java and the company's flagship blend, Kudo Select.

Like wine tasting, coffee sampling involves the "sniff, slurp and spit," routine, said Stephen Schulman, vice president for coffee operations at Kudo Beans.

As the company aggressively markets to small and medium-size greengrocers and delis around the city, the impact on overall sales for the stores that have switched to Kudo Beans remains to be seen. And in a city with so many beans and brews to choose from, it is still unclear whether Kudo Beans will garner a following among coffee lovers, even frugal ones.

David Abrahams, a lifelong New Yorker and coffee drinker who brews high-quality coffee at home and drinks deli coffee at lunch, made a pot of Kudo Select the other day, after a friend gave him a pound of beans.

"It's definitely not mud," said Mr. Abrahams, 75, who for the last several years has been in a competition with his upstairs neighbor on East 10th Street to find the best beans. "I would call it average. I've had better and I've had worse. It's very mild. But I would say the beans are very small."

Mr. Abrahams, a stockbroker who said Starbucks coffee was too expensive, added, "If you really want doughnuts for the rest of your life, Dunkin' Donuts is the best."

At the Prince Street grocery, coffee customers said they had noticed a welcome improvement in the taste of the coffee since Mr. Park began serving Kudo Beans.

"Coffee would sit on the burner until it turned into a reduction sauce," said Eric Hammer, 35, a graphic designer who said he has been drinking two or three cups of Mr. Park's coffee daily for the seven years Prince Farm has been in business.

So why did he put up with it?

"I was psychotically a fan of New York deli coffee," he said the other day, before pouring himself a second large cup of Kudo Beans coffee. "I don't know how much of it was Starbucks bashing and how much of it was posturing on my part, this idea that American coffee is a drink, a utilitarian, almost medicinal drink. But Starbucks really did change coffee drinking. It made people realize that coffee doesn't have to taste like garbage."

Mr. Hammer then admitted to going to Starbucks about once a week and he then had some comments about the Kudo Beans logo (too heavy on the color brown) and the name of the company.

"May I suggest that they also use a name from Moby-Dick?" he said.