Why Espresso? Explaining Changes in European Coffee Preferences from a Production of Culture Perspective
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire ISSN: 1350-7486 (Print) 1469-8293 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cerh20 Why espresso? Explaining changes in European coffee preferences from a production of culture perspective Jonathan Morris To cite this article: Jonathan Morris (2013) Why espresso? Explaining changes in European coffee preferences from a production of culture perspective, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, 20:5, 881-901, DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2013.833717 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2013.833717 © 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis Published online: 24 Oct 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 959 View related articles Citing articles: 3 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cerh20 Download by: [University of Hertfordshire] Date: 07 March 2016, At: 02:25 European Review of History:Revue europe´ enne d’histoire,2013 Vol. 20, No. 5, 881–901, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2013.833717 Why espresso? Explaining changes in European coffee preferences from aproduction of culture perspective Jonathan Morris* School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom ( Received 5April 2013; accepted 3May 2013) Since the 1990s supposedly ‘historic’ fault lines separating coffee preferences and practices across the European continent have been broken down. The consumption of Italian-style espresso-based beverages outside the home is now widespread. Much of this is drunk in branded coffee-shop outlets, based on aformat popularised in the United States. This article investigates these changes employing the culture of production perspective. It is structured in three parts. The first investigates the formation of quasi-national coffee-drinking styles in the at-home and away-from-home sectors with particular reference to Italy; the second analyses the transformation of out- of-home coffee-drinking in the UK during the 1990s; and the third examines the spread of Italian-style coffee across the European continent. Keywords: coffee;coffee culture; espresso;food history; McDonaldisation; production of culture Introduction The lasttwo decades have witnessed sweeping changesincoffee culture across Europe, both in terms of the coffee beverages consumed and the places in which consumption has taken place. Supposedly ‘historic’ fault lines separating regional beverage preferences and practices across the continent appear to be breaking down with the widespread adoption of Italian-style espresso-based beverages such as cappuccino,caffe` latte and lattemacchiato. These coffee drinks are at the centre of the offerwithin the ‘speciality coffee shop’ –a new service format that has spread into Europe from the UnitedStates –epitomised by the Starbucks chain, which was operating in 20 European countries as of December 2011.1 This article seeks to analyse why espresso coffee achieved prominence within European popular cultureduring the late twentieth century, focusing on the roleof‘producers’ in effecting this transformation, and the extent to which it can be characterised as reflective of Americanisation, Europeanisation and/or Italophilia among coffee consumers. Downloaded by [University of Hertfordshire] at 02:25 07 March 2016 Commentatorshavesuggested thatchanges in consumerdemandcausedbythe fundamental transformations in work andlifestylesexperienced overthe course of thedigital revolutionoffer one explanationfor thesuccess of thecoffee-shop format. The adventand diffusionofthe personal, then portable, computer, themobilephone and thespreadof wirelessconnectivityhaveall,inturn, contributed to thecreationofmoreautonomous ways of working. As well as enabling employeestoenjoy thefacilitiesofthe coffeeshopduring theworking day, theself-employedhaveincreasinglyadoptedthemasanalternativeoffice. A2012surveyof‘cappuccinocommerce’ suggested 22%ofsmall businessstart-ups in the UK hadbased themselves in coffeeshops to keep theiroverheads low.2 *Email: [email protected] © 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecom mons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the origi- nal work is properly cited. 8822 J. Morris Class position has often been portrayed as aconstraint upon access to thiscappuccino culture. Yet in 2013 the price of aregular cappuccino was recorded as being lower or equal to that for a500 ml glassoflocal draught beer in 20 of the 27 EU memberstates.3 Both these beverages are used to charge for access to asocial space; the difference is that the coffee shop, although equally accessible in economicterms, is perceived as culturally exclusive in away that the traditional drinkingestablishmentisnot. This is partly because the ‘Italian-style’ beverages are considered highlypriced in comparison to an ‘ordinary coffee’,particularly when prepared in the home. The questions become, therefore, how and why some social groups (not necessarily classes) were persuaded to pay this price to change their coffee preference, and why the ‘speciality coffee shop’ becamethe place where work and sociability intermingled. To answer thesequestions, this article engages explicitly with the production of culture perspective developed by sociologist Richard A. Peterson,which analyses six facets of production –technology, law and regulation, industry structure,organisation structure, occupational careers,and producers’ perceptions of the market –inrelation to one another.4 This model movesthe focus of explanations for cultural change awayfrom autonomous shifts in consumer tastes that supposedly reflect aZeitgeist,orthe impact of such ‘genius’ innovations such as AchilleGaggia’sespresso machine, towards transformations withinthe industries that supported the production and diffusion of new cultural outputs. Peterson’s article ‘Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of RockMusic’,for example, highlights the importance of ashift by record producers from perceiving the market as homogeneoustoheterogeneous, using the other facets of the perspective to analyse why this occurred in the mid-1950s.5 An approach that shares Peterson’s focus on producers of expressive symbols was applied to coffee culture by anthropologist William Roseberry. He analysed the waysin which ‘coffeemen’ in the US sought to convince customers of the superior qualitiesof their specialty products to those of the food conglomerates.Instead of thinking of the coffee market as asingle massentity, roasters began to practise segmentation: crafting new blends to fit the desires of particulartypes of customers. ‘Ethical’ coffees (e.g. fairly traded),‘flavoured’ coffees (e.g. vanilla coffee) and ‘origin’ coffees (e.g. Guatemalan) were all developed to appealtodifferent segmentsofthe market,enablingconsumersto exercisechoice and discrimination by purchasing coffee that expressed their personal values and tastes. This appealed particularly to younger generations in search of goods that demonstrated whatPierre Bourdieu has called‘cultural capital’ –hence Roseberry’s article is entitled ‘The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class’.6 Thesources and methodology adopted in the following article reflect the contemporary Downloaded by [University of Hertfordshire] at 02:25 07 March 2016 nature and producer focus of the approach. Like Roseberry, Ihave madeconsiderable use of the trade press, ‘peering over the shoulder’ofthe ‘community of coffeemen’ in order to eavesdrop on them talking to themselves, rather than to the consumer public.7 Unlikehim, Ihave takenthis further by attending trade presentations and industryconferences, and consulting market-research data that is notfreely available within the public domain.8 Ihavealsoutilisedoral-history interviews,alongsideinformal(but noted) conversations and email exchanges. Following Christopher Breward in his workon fashion, Isee theseasways of connecting what, adapting Goffman, might be called the ‘back stage’ view of the coffee industry, to the ‘front end’ performativeaspects of producing coffee culture.9 All such evidence needs to be treated as text produced with its own particular biases and objectives,and preferably triangulated (although in the absence of archives, such corroboration mustoften be obtainedfrom similar sources). Nonetheless it yields information that would not be discussed in public forums, including the trade EuropeanReview of History—Revue europe´ enne d’histoire 8833 press, such as accounts of failure, and non-attributable actions. For example, Iasked one informant why he thought his coffee product had achieved such resonance with consumers as to be includedinapublication listing of Britain’s iconic brands. ‘That’s simple Jonathan,’hereplied, ‘we bought it’ –thereby transformingthe evidence that Iwas preparing to analyse as areflection of consumer preference, into amanifestation of producer tactics.10 This article will contend that the samefacets of production that were identified by Peterson can help explain the waysinwhich popular tastes and practices surrounding coffee-drinking have evolved withinEurope. It is structuredinthree parts. The first discusseswhatwemeanbycoffee, and investigates whenand why coffee-drinking preferences began to diverge across the continent. It distinguishes betweenthe