Coffee

Coffee has continuously ranked high among other beverage choices since its discovery in Ethiopia on the 9th century. The great number of companies providing coffee services can attest to that. Several important factors must be considered before deciding for the right coffee service for the office.

An efficient office coffee service builds productivity of the employees and impresses visiting clients. Begin planning with the size and location. Some companies offering coffee service operate nationally while others serve regional locations. Some particular office coffee vendors limit service to those offices with 20 or more personnel.

Consider the level of service too. A number of coffee service providers supply the equipment and coffee. You must handle the stocking, cleaning and managing orders when they provide the coffee and equipment. Full service companies also provide sales representatives that take care of most of those needs.

Cost is a very important factor in selecting the right office coffee service company. It is a good to first compare the services with the cost and also weigh the costs versus the services provided by different companies.

Do not forget the coffee brew itself. Coffee brewers may come in pot, single cup, glass and metal type models. The coffee is packed in cans, pods, bags, and other various packages. Similarly, selection of coffee ranges from supermarket varieties, specialty coffees to premium brands.

You will be presented with various machines when offering services of coffee in an office environment. You may consider buying a standard office coffee machine if you want to offer just a regular brew.

A machine producing the same amount of coffee as the one used in most home is a good choice, considering the number of your office employees. The coffee machine that makes a larger amount is also an interesting option. While you do not necessarily need to purchase such coffee machine from company that specializes in that field, doing so can be a helpful choice especially when you are looking for the one that brews a larger quantity of coffee at one time.

The espresso machine is another option. More people are preferring espresso over regular coffee nowadays. Some machines are designed for brewing both regular coffee and espresso.

Another good option is to buy a vending machine which will offer an array of coffee products and other varieties of hot and cold beverages as well. These may provide hot chocolate, espresso, and also hot water for steeping tea. We can usually find these machines in most large office settings. They are made to satisfy different tastes and preferences.

Here are some successful companies offering coffee services. The Wagner Coffee Service has been in the business since 1978. They have been providing excellent service and good quality of coffee to restaurants and offices in the Baltimore Washington area. They are a member of the National Coffee Service Association and strive to be the leader in this industry of the Mid-Atlantic region.

The Canteen Refreshment Services offers a complete customized menu. They deliver a coffee program suitable to the workplaces and different tastes. They serve Folgers, Maxwell House, Starbucks and other well-respected brands in single cups, glass pots and air pot brewers.

ARAMARK Refreshment Services is considered as North America’s leading refreshment service provider with 89 office coffee service locations. They serve billions cups of coffee annually.

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Author: David Urmann
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world. The word coffee is believed to have been deduced from Kaffa, a place situated in Ethiopia, Africa, It came into existence around 800 A.D. and there are many legends and stories associated with discovery.

One such interesting story goes like this. One day a monk saw a goatherd imitating his sheep who were dancing from one shrub to another, grazing the cherry-red berries containing coffee beans. The monk was amazed at the goatherd’s caper on eating the beans. The monk took some of the berries for his fellow monks and that night they realized that they seemed to attain something that they felt was ‘divine stimulation’.

Other than the legends and stories there is also historical evidence about how the Africans of the same era used the coffee plant in different ways. Africans used what can be called primitive ‘Power Bars’ made of coffee and animal fat as a stimulant. They also made wine from the coffee-berry pulp. From Africa, coffee moved out towards Arabia via the Red Sea and then slowly made its way to the rest of the world.

Coffee, as we know it today came into existence around 1000 A.D. and this is when it was first roasted and brewed. By the 13th Century, coffee became popular with the Muslim holy men who found it a very convenient drink it to keep worshippers awake and send them in a tizzy. Then onwards, coffee traveled with the Muslims. Wherever Islam went, coffee traveled along. However, Arabians were cautious and did not want to share the plant with the world. They made sure that no coffee bean sprouted outside Arabia and coffee beans were boiled or parched to make them infertile before taking out of Arabia.

An enterprising Indian pilgrim cum smuggler, Baba Budan, strapped some fertile coffee beans to his stomach and left Mecca. These beans were ultimately responsible for the agricultural expansion of coffee, which later reached Europe’s colonies in the East.

From these colonies, coffee was traded by a Venice merchant who took it to Europe. The Europeans liked it so much that they wanted a constant supply of the beans. And later, it was the Dutch who set up the first European-owned coffee plantation in colonial Java in 1616. The Dutch were, however, not as cautious as the Arabians and they gifted coffee trees to the aristocracy all over Europe. Louis XIV was presented one such coffee tree in 1714, for his garden in Paris.

The coffee tree finally crossed the Atlantic with Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, a retired French naval officer. He smuggled a sprout with him to Martinique, a French Colony in the Caribbean after he was denied a clipping of the tree. Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu guarded the plant religiously. When the ship got caught in a storm de Clieu nurtured the pant with half of the water that he was rationed. Ultimately, the sprout flourished in Martinique and in the next 50 years more than 18 million coffee trees were grown there.

By 1727, Brazil had realized the potential of the plant and wanted a share in the coffee pie. Unable to get the plant through fair means, they dispatched Lt. Col. Francisco de Melo Palheta, allegedly to mediate in a border dispute, to French Guiana. Avoiding the heavily guarded coffee plantations, he chose to take the easy route of befriending the governor’s wife who slyly presented him a bouquet spiked with coffee seedlings on his farewell dinner. Coffee had now entered Brazil, a land of extremely fertile farms.

From 800 A.D. in Africa to 1727 in Brazil, the coffee plant had traveled through Middle East, South East and Europe and then to South America. Production of coffee reached dizzying heights due to the enormous harvests of Brazil’s fertile lands. This boom in production, apart from anything else, was instrumental in turning coffee, an elitist drink till then, into a drink of the masses.

Initially considered as a poor substitute for alcohol by the American colonists, its popularity grew when tea from Britain became scarce during the Revolutionary War. During and after the American Civil War, coffee had gained a premier position and was being increasingly accepted. Later, advancement in brewing technology ultimately secured its place as an everyday beverage of America.

Coffee City Offers extensive articles and resources on coffee, espresso, coffee beans, coffee making, etc.

Author: Mel Ng
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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You may know about which coffee beans taste best and maybe even about roasting and grinding beans, but here are ten coffee beans facts, some of which you may have never heard before!

1. Colossal Coffee Beans – The largest coffee bean is the Nicaragua Maragogipe, a variety of the Arabica species.
2. Good Things Come to Those Who Wait – With just the right amount of shade, sun, rain, and the right climate, coffee plants will begin producing coffee berries containing the “beans.”
3. Coffee Bean Not a Native of Costa Rica – The Spanish traveller, Navarro, introduced Cuban coffee to Costa Rica in 1779.
4. Not Really “Beans” – Believe it or not, coffee beans are not really beans at all. They are not in the legume family, but rather they are the pits found inside of the coffee berries.
5. Making the Grade – Coffee beans are graded in various ways. Columbian beans are graded from highest to lowest as: “Supremo” “Excelso”, “Extra” and “Pasilla”. Kenyan beans are graded with letter grades AA, AB, PB, C, E, TT, and T and the grades simply refer to the size, shape, and density of the coffee bean. For coffee beans, size does matter because larger coffee beans contain more of the oil that makes coffee so tasty. Costa Rican coffee beans are graded as Strictly Hard Bean, Good Hard Bean, Hard Bean, Medium Hard Bean, High Grown Atlantic, Medium Grown Atlantic, and Low Grown Atlantic, from highest to lowest, respectively, and these grades refer to the heights at which the beans were grown – Strictly Hard Bean, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the Costa Rica coffee crop is the top grade grown above 3,900 feet.
6. Hand-Picked – Even to this day, most coffee is still picked by hand, and a coffee worker can pick from 100 to 200 pounds of coffee berries a day!
7. An Acre of Coffee – How much coffee would you guess to get out of an acre of coffee plants? One acre typically yields about 10,000 pounds of coffee fruits or coffee cherries – which comes to around 2,000 pounds of coffee beans.
8. Imported Coffee – As much as Americans adore coffee, no coffee is grown in the Continental U.S.; the only American places that produce coffee are Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
9. The Most Expensive Coffee – The most expensive coffee in the world is Kopi Luwak, selling for between $100 and $600 USD per pound (2009)
10. Also the Most Unusual Coffee – The most expensive coffee is also quite possibly the most unusual coffee in the world – since the coffee berries go through the digestive tract of the Kopi Luwak (a small cat-sized Indonesian animal), are then harvested from the animal’s waste, and then the beans removed, cleaned (hopefully!), roasted, and sold.

That’s right, believe it or not, it takes 3-5 years for a coffee plant to produce coffee, and only if the conditions are perfect; coffee beans aren’t really beans at all; and the most expensive coffee comes from digested coffee gathered from animal feces!

Jennifer Hall enjoys spending her days in coffee shops writing articles and trying out different blends and offers tips and information on coffee beans for Coffee Beans 101 – the premier coffee bean site on the web!

Author: Jennifer Hall
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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