America's drinking habits.

Let's take a look at what competition coffee has in the marketplace. First, of course, is water. In the last few years, water has become a commercial item through the sale of many purified types of water which are sold through supermarkets. Next is alcoholic spirits, such as beer and wine. Foremost in the liquid availability are the so-called "soft drinks," the number one liquid being consumed in America today. Coffee still holds the number two position, while back in the 1950s and 1960s coffee outscored the soft drinks.

Through heavy advertising and cultural changes, soft drinks have overtaken coffee. It is no secret that during the 1950s and 1960s, the postwar generation tried to do things differently from what their parents did, and if their parents drank coffee, they felt that coffee was not the thing for them, so they turned to soft drinks. The soft drink industry has done a wonderful job of merchandising and marketing their products and capitalizing on the cultural changes which have taken place.

Another liquid group that competes with coffee are fruit juices and fruit drinks. Further down the line are milk, milk products, and tea (both hot and iced). In the tea category, most of the activity is in iced tea (roughly 70-75% of all tea consumed in the U.S. is in the form of iced).

Let's take a look at how coffee has evolved as a competitor in the effort for the share of liquids consumed by Americans today. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, coffee was very much a generic product being offered in supermarkets as whole bean or ground coffee. Later on, there was an emergence of decaffeinated versions coming into the marketplace. At the time, decaf consumption was small but eventually rose to over 20% of all coffee sales for a short period of time. This was attributed to health concerns about the effects of coffee on the human body. Many of these concerns have been laid to rest through large scientific studies. Decaf consumption has declined somewhat and is now in the range of 12-14% of the total. It has been stable in this range for the last five to seven years.

With the generic availability of coffee in the marketplace, coffee lost market share of the liquid intake. Coffee consumption declined steadily from 1962 all the way into the early 1990s, when it finally began to stabilize. The coffee industry realized it had to broaden its appeal. They needed to come out with new products and offer a greater variety. We began to see European and French roast coffee on the supermarket shelves and also single origin blends. Also at that time, the Specialty Coffee Association of America came into being and promoted, through its retailer members, the consumption of specialty coffees. Establishments started offering a variety of coffee blends to the consumer based on the finest quality coffees available from the various producing countries.

New food and beverage ideas have often sprung up in the United States' West Coast, namely California, Oregon, and Washington. They seem to be pioneering new ideas in both the food and beverage areas. And so it was with coffee. The idea of espresso, cappuccino, and latte-type beverages in the U.S. began in the 1980s in Seattle. Seattle very quickly became the capital of that type of coffee, boasting myriad coffee bars where these types of beverages were available and very popular. Slowly, these concepts spread throughout the country and are just now arriving in my neck of the woods: the southeast. It took a long time for these beverages to reach the southeast, but they are now here to stay. It also seems one of the pioneers in this area, namely Starbucks, has played a significant role in re-educating the American consumer to the pleasures and joys of coffee.

Starbucks became unique because it offered a darker, heavier roast coffee, which is slowly gaining in popularity. Americans were generally used to what we call a "medium city roast" coffee, and this is slowly being replaced in many areas with the somewhat darker roast pioneered by Starbucks.

Another new item that entered the market in the mid-1980s was flavored coffee ... and it literally exploded later on in the decade and into the 1990s.

Today, there are an infinite variety of flavors available. They can be purchased as flavored roasts which simply need to be brewed, or they can be added to regular coffee in liquid or powered form to provide options to the consumer at home.

Within the varieties, there are more at this time. As an example, I recently had the pleasure, in a Cuban restaurant in Florida, to drink genuine Cuban coffee. It is coffee roasted with sugar added during the roasting process. The coffee is, in effect, pre-sweetened. This beverage may be too sweet for some Americans. It also was a darker roast, which was unique and pleasant. There are many other dark roast Latin American-type coffees appearing in the marketplace, particularly in the areas where the Latin influence is great, such as California and south Florida.

While consumption of coffee has not increased, at least we have leveled the statistical curve - so coffee consumption has been stable for the past four or five years.