WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Coffee merchandising cover

Coffee merchandising

Chapter 2: PREFACE
By William H. Ukers
Open in WeRead

About This Book

A practical handbook aimed at newcomers to the coffee trade, it surveys the beverage's early history, plant biology, and chemical properties, then explains cultivation, harvesting and processing methods used in producing countries. It outlines buying practices at origin and wholesale market mechanisms including grading, futures, and hedging, and describes bean and cup characteristics, sample roasting and blending techniques, and commercial roasting operations. Chapters cover retail merchandising, hotel and restaurant supply, packaging, advertising, and testing procedures, with illustrations and practical guidance for salesmen and students seeking foundational knowledge of coffee production and marketing.

PREFACE

This work has been written in response to a demand for a handbook for the especial use of those engaged in the coffee business. To a certain extent it represents a condensation of the author’s encyclopedic work, “All About Coffee.” “Coffee Merchandising,” however, is designed primarily for beginners in the coffee business. It will be found to contain all the elementary and essential facts pertaining to the history, cultivation, preparation, and marketing of coffee.

In it the author has tried to avoid dogmatism. He has aimed to tell briefly the story of coffee, including all those things which every intelligent coffee man should know concerning the early history of the beverage, the botany of the plant, the chemistry of coffee, how coffee grows, how it is prepared for the market, how it is bought and sold in the countries of production, and how it is marketed at wholesale and at retail in the United States. In the telling of the story the author has given the reader the best thought of the trade on all controversial questions, striving to keep his own opinions in the background.

Then, too, the aim has been not only to tell the history story, but to show how successful men in the coffee trade have built up the most enduring business. For this reason the work should prove a source of inspiration, as well as a fount of knowledge, for students and salesmen.

Those who may wish to make a more thorough study of the subject, to delve deeply into the history, romance, and poetry of coffee, or its scientific aspects, are referred to “All About Coffee,” by the same author.

There are two important factors which make for success in the coffee business,—faith and work,—an abiding faith in the opportunity which it offers to render a public service and which inspires the faithful student to get all the facts about coffee so as to be able to give reasons for his faith; then an intelligent application of the knowledge coupled with that diligence in business which always spells success in any trade or profession—and lo! the battle is won. It is the author’s hope that “Coffee Merchandising” will prove a lamp that will shed some helpful light on the way of all those who are pushing on to greater achievements in the coffee business.