IS COFFEE DRINKING DECLINING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 965, 3 September 1908, Page 23

IS COFFEE DRINKING DECLINING.

The suggestion may surprise many persons that coffee-drinking is on the decline; yet, on the authority on the London Chamber of Commerce, the total consumption of coffee throughout the country is year by year decreasing. It is a surprising statement, because there seems little evidence of any decrease of coffee-drink-ing in restaurants; rather would it seem that it is steadily increasing. The explanation is probably this: Coffee, in the first place, gives the housekeeper a considerable amount of trouble to make, and then it is neither economical nor convenient to make it in small quantities, whereas the making oftea requires merely the pouring of boiling water on to the leaves, while the beverage is better when it is made in small pots than in large urns. The consequence is that tea is to a large extent superseding coffee in'the home, whereas in the restaurant improved methods of making coffee in large quantities, together with improvements in the blending and roasting of the berry by wholesale houses, have led to a steady increase in its popularity in restaurants. Strangely enough, however, there are still English people who do not appreciate good coffee, and really prefer to have it slightly adulterated with chicory. It has even been stated by a coffee merchant that pure Mocha would be nauseating to the majority of people. Mocha used, some fifty years ago, to be the special beverage of French restaurants of a high class. Now, however, it has been superseded by the cheaper Brazilian kind, and even in the best hotels a blend of Mocha and Martinique is the nearest approach to it that can be obtained. In London, however, there are hotels and restaurants, such as the Savoy and the Cafe Royal, where the guests can drink pure Mocha coffee, if his tastes be sufficiently epicurean to make him desire it. So far as the decrease in the total consumption of coffee goes, it does not really prove that the taste for coffee in England is declining; for the fact that it can be made more economically in large quantities than in the domestic coffee-pot indicates that the consumption of a certain quantify of the berry in restaurants represent more coffee drinkers than the same weight of coffee consumed domestically.— (“The Caterer.”)