Here's some bad news if you're someone who likes his or her morning fix of lard and sugar. Or news that you will be totally indifferent towards if you don't. The price of the ensaïmada is on the rise. I'm firmly in the indifference camp. They can charge what they like. I'm not buying anyway.
The ensaïmada may not qualify as a basic necessity of life, though for some it may do. Bread, on the other hand. Meat, too. Coffee? A questionable necessity, but something most cannot do without. What do they all have in common? They are all getting more expensive. Why? The price of commodities.
Strange to report, but ensaïmadas don't grow on trees. There aren't groves of these coiled frisbees hovering from branches in the late-winter breezes around Soller, and spreading sugary blossom. The ensaïmada doesn't come from anywhere, but a key ingredient does. The cereal for its flour. Coffee does not get pumped out of wells from fincas around Mallorca. It isn't expresso-ed from industrial Gaggias and transported in tankers. It comes in the form of a bean. Cereals, beans. Commodities.
The cost of cereals has risen to the extent that the price in the bar or the shop of the ensaïmada or bread may be affected by as much as a 20% increase. Meat is also affected, thanks to the increased cost of animal feed that includes a mix of grain. The rising cost of bread is aggravating a trend in the Balearics that has seen bread consumption fall significantly in the past decade. Per person, this consumption is half that of some other parts of Spain. The increased cost is clearly not the jam; it is the dripping of fears for the tenability of the local baker's shop.
Commodity prices generally are undergoing a boom time. Much of the reason for this lies with investment on futures markets by fund managers. Not content with having created recession, the bankers are now fuelling inflation and sending prices up thanks to their hedged and derivative mathematical models, and coining it in through the bonus system. The rich get richer and the poor can't afford to be given this day their daily bread. Or ensaïmada.
Cereals and meat may be on the rise, but they're nothing compared with coffee. The highest prices ever are being registered in trading in Kenya. I repeat, highest prices ever. The commodity boom is just one factor, another is poor weather, especially in South America. The price of coffee has been on an upward movement for some while. The current highest prices ever in Nairobi were predated by, for example, a 44% rise in coffee futures between June and September last year.
This doesn't mean a 44% rise in the price of your cortado in the local bar (or you would hope not), but the trading in coffee does have an effect. Obviously it does. The effect filters through the holes of the coffee supply chain to the wholesaler and thence to the shop or café and, naturally enough, to the drinker. Unless, that is, the retailer or the café-owner decides to absorb any rise and see his margin eroded. Or, he may opt for an inferior-grade coffee that is cheaper, but doesn't taste as good.
The rise in commodity prices comes on top of those for fuel and energy. The price on the forecourts has gone up, electricity rose by 10% at the start of this year, gas is also more expensive. Mallorca doesn't exist in isolation - well, actually it does in one respect, which is its own story - and so it is as affected by global trading and by the prices of commodities and oil as anywhere.
There may be an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, some of which has been affected by leaf rust, but there isn't an awful lot of it in Mallorca. In fact there isn't any, other than the awful of it that is drunk. And the price of your morning dose of caffeine and ensaïmada looks as though it might just get higher.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Coffee. Show all posts
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Yet Another Cup Of Coffee: The déjà vu of price
Go back a couple of months to the second of April and I said sorry. Said that I was going to stop. That there would be no more. Until the next time.
This is the next time.
In "The Last Supper" (2 April) I referred to "anecdotal simplism". It was in respect of prices, specifically the price of a coffee. "The Bulletin" had commented on a small coffee costing one euro, ninety. So it did again. Yesterday. There was an admission that the point had been made before, and so there should have been. The example was the same, the line of argument the same; that there should be price controls, mainly it would appear (this time round), for coffees in Palma. You can, if you want, go further back, to 30 August last year. Same price control argument. You can go back much further than August last year; it's a line that has been trotted out for some years. Editorial déjà vu.
I just don't get it. I don't get the argument for the simple reason that there is no chance of a price control being implemented (and the tourism minister in April said that there was nothing she could do about the prices). It is an issue for individual businesses. I don't get it for the additional reason that I don't get why it has been dragged out once more.
There are all sorts of examples one can pull out regarding inflated prices, just as there are all sorts of examples of the opposite, of prices being kept low or simply being low. A while back I mentioned a conversation during which I was told how the Swedish are finding beer prices higher than once was the case. But this was specific to beach bars. You simply cannot just cite examples here and there and claim that you have proven a case.
It is this, especially this, that I don't get: "The Bulletin", any paper, should strive for some balance. Quoting the example of an expensive cortado in Palma is far from this. All it does is to inspire the moans of others who will cite their own selected examples. And all this does is to create an uneven impression. Last year, another paper - "The Diario" - spoke to tourists and came up with a rather different conclusion: that prices weren't all that bad. What it did was to go and talk to people; it was acting with a degree of balance. I'm afraid that "The Bulletin" doesn't do this; just hauls out the odd example and calls for what is not feasible - price controls.
I said that I would stop it. I wish others would.
An event for your diary. If, that is, you like your club music in the sun - all day long. On June 27 there will be an "Ibiza Summer Festival" at Hidropark in Puerto Alcúdia. Sounds pretty good, kicking off at 10:30 in the morning. Information posted on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This is the next time.
In "The Last Supper" (2 April) I referred to "anecdotal simplism". It was in respect of prices, specifically the price of a coffee. "The Bulletin" had commented on a small coffee costing one euro, ninety. So it did again. Yesterday. There was an admission that the point had been made before, and so there should have been. The example was the same, the line of argument the same; that there should be price controls, mainly it would appear (this time round), for coffees in Palma. You can, if you want, go further back, to 30 August last year. Same price control argument. You can go back much further than August last year; it's a line that has been trotted out for some years. Editorial déjà vu.
I just don't get it. I don't get the argument for the simple reason that there is no chance of a price control being implemented (and the tourism minister in April said that there was nothing she could do about the prices). It is an issue for individual businesses. I don't get it for the additional reason that I don't get why it has been dragged out once more.
There are all sorts of examples one can pull out regarding inflated prices, just as there are all sorts of examples of the opposite, of prices being kept low or simply being low. A while back I mentioned a conversation during which I was told how the Swedish are finding beer prices higher than once was the case. But this was specific to beach bars. You simply cannot just cite examples here and there and claim that you have proven a case.
It is this, especially this, that I don't get: "The Bulletin", any paper, should strive for some balance. Quoting the example of an expensive cortado in Palma is far from this. All it does is to inspire the moans of others who will cite their own selected examples. And all this does is to create an uneven impression. Last year, another paper - "The Diario" - spoke to tourists and came up with a rather different conclusion: that prices weren't all that bad. What it did was to go and talk to people; it was acting with a degree of balance. I'm afraid that "The Bulletin" doesn't do this; just hauls out the odd example and calls for what is not feasible - price controls.
I said that I would stop it. I wish others would.
An event for your diary. If, that is, you like your club music in the sun - all day long. On June 27 there will be an "Ibiza Summer Festival" at Hidropark in Puerto Alcúdia. Sounds pretty good, kicking off at 10:30 in the morning. Information posted on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Storm In A Teacup
Tea. Jeremy Clarkson denounced the drinking of tea in "The Sunday Times" this week. Among the ills that tea has caused, in Clarkson's world, is the virtual collapse of the British banking system. Coffee is the beverage required by sound banking systems - just look at the Spanish.
Tea, you see, is not the first thing that comes to the Spanish mind when about to embark on a strenuous couple of hours of lolling around in a café nursing but one drink. Of course it isn't. The café is the same word as café (coffee). Why would you drink tea in an establishment that is named after coffee? This probably explains the tea that does get served. Because the Spanish don't get it where tea is concerned, they are extremely reluctant to provide it. They may well say that it is tea, but don't be fooled. Whatever that sachet with a piece of string contains, you can be confident that it isn't actually tea. The same applies to those places that bring along a cafetiere of tea. Why, one asks, would you put tea into something that is intended for coffee? But be that as it may. As with the sachet, you need to wait a good half an hour for whatever it is to "brew" and then press the plunger, by which time it is stone cold and when it is poured into milk becomes the colour of sand. Maybe that's it. Tea is sand.
Oddly enough though, if one gets local tea from a supermarket, it does actually taste and look like tea without also tasting or looking as though it has been mixed with engine oil as can be the case with hardcore British tea. Indeed something like the Eroski own-brand "té" is vastly preferable to a Tetley's tea-bag. Put that anywhere near water and the instant result is as if the whole plantation, earth included, is being forced down your throat. There are some who like their tea strong, northerners usually, but this can only be so that they want their jaws glued together with the industrial quantities of tannin that "flood out" of a Tetley's. But actually finding tea in its unadulterated state is becoming increasingly difficult in the supermarkets. Go to the admittedly not vast tea sections and there are pretend teas that require a dictionary to be ready to hand in order to translate whatever obscure herb they are made from. Try finding a pack of "té". So long as it isn't actually tea, the Spanish are quite happy to drink it.
The Spanish love-in with coffee is hard to explain insofar as one would not expect many to still be alive once they've had one. I'm sure it's the case that there is a rule that all bars and cafés must have a defibrillator on the premises as well as a hotline to a team of paramedics. I now always ask for a coffee "flojo" (weak) on the basis that it won't be weak but may not be so strong that someone will have to rifle through my wallet and look for my health card. I also often append the adjective "caliente" (hot) to the milk noun if it is café con leche I'm ordering. I have always believed that hot drinks should be just that - hot. If I wanted a cold drink, I'd order a water or a beer or the half-hour-to-vaguely-brew tea. But cold and coffee go together here; there is the rather odd phenomenon of having an expresso and a glass of ice, and pouring the former into the latter. I tried it once, and it is truly pointless. It is beyond the bounds of taste (good taste, that is) if then sugar is chucked in. Iced water with sugar. How can anyone justify that?
Of course there isn't any discussion when it comes to sugar. It just arrives, some of it in elaborate packaging that can fool you into believing they've been kind enough to give you a freebie of a triangle of Toblerone. Except it wouldn't be free and nor is the sugar, even if, as is most likely, they've not actually paid for it. No, the cost of the coffee is priced according to the designer wedge-shaped sugar packet. I never have sugar, and yet there it always is. Do they offer a discount for returning the sugar? Do they heck. That's why they don't get a tip.
GALES AND BENEFIT SEEKING
More gales hit during Sunday; the second lot in a few days. The worst of the weather affected the south, but the winds were still powerful in the north, though with only intermittent rain. Someone here had a wall go over. The strength of the gusts was at times quite frightening; God knows how bad it was in the south. Then yesterday it started fine, which, for the massive dole queue at the unemployment office in Puerto Alcúdia, must have been good news, until that is, it started to rain. All those people having to stand and wait in the elements; there is something not quite right with this. I thought it was just foreigners who were treated with disrespect by having to queue under a boiling sun or in the rain at the foreign affairs building in Palma. Not so; everyone is treated similarly. There has got to be a better way.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Great stuff - Underworld, "Born Slippy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlLWFa1b1Bc). Today's title - various songs with this title, but what about the one by a "lucky" Brummie pop group of the '60s and '70s?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tea, you see, is not the first thing that comes to the Spanish mind when about to embark on a strenuous couple of hours of lolling around in a café nursing but one drink. Of course it isn't. The café is the same word as café (coffee). Why would you drink tea in an establishment that is named after coffee? This probably explains the tea that does get served. Because the Spanish don't get it where tea is concerned, they are extremely reluctant to provide it. They may well say that it is tea, but don't be fooled. Whatever that sachet with a piece of string contains, you can be confident that it isn't actually tea. The same applies to those places that bring along a cafetiere of tea. Why, one asks, would you put tea into something that is intended for coffee? But be that as it may. As with the sachet, you need to wait a good half an hour for whatever it is to "brew" and then press the plunger, by which time it is stone cold and when it is poured into milk becomes the colour of sand. Maybe that's it. Tea is sand.
Oddly enough though, if one gets local tea from a supermarket, it does actually taste and look like tea without also tasting or looking as though it has been mixed with engine oil as can be the case with hardcore British tea. Indeed something like the Eroski own-brand "té" is vastly preferable to a Tetley's tea-bag. Put that anywhere near water and the instant result is as if the whole plantation, earth included, is being forced down your throat. There are some who like their tea strong, northerners usually, but this can only be so that they want their jaws glued together with the industrial quantities of tannin that "flood out" of a Tetley's. But actually finding tea in its unadulterated state is becoming increasingly difficult in the supermarkets. Go to the admittedly not vast tea sections and there are pretend teas that require a dictionary to be ready to hand in order to translate whatever obscure herb they are made from. Try finding a pack of "té". So long as it isn't actually tea, the Spanish are quite happy to drink it.
The Spanish love-in with coffee is hard to explain insofar as one would not expect many to still be alive once they've had one. I'm sure it's the case that there is a rule that all bars and cafés must have a defibrillator on the premises as well as a hotline to a team of paramedics. I now always ask for a coffee "flojo" (weak) on the basis that it won't be weak but may not be so strong that someone will have to rifle through my wallet and look for my health card. I also often append the adjective "caliente" (hot) to the milk noun if it is café con leche I'm ordering. I have always believed that hot drinks should be just that - hot. If I wanted a cold drink, I'd order a water or a beer or the half-hour-to-vaguely-brew tea. But cold and coffee go together here; there is the rather odd phenomenon of having an expresso and a glass of ice, and pouring the former into the latter. I tried it once, and it is truly pointless. It is beyond the bounds of taste (good taste, that is) if then sugar is chucked in. Iced water with sugar. How can anyone justify that?
Of course there isn't any discussion when it comes to sugar. It just arrives, some of it in elaborate packaging that can fool you into believing they've been kind enough to give you a freebie of a triangle of Toblerone. Except it wouldn't be free and nor is the sugar, even if, as is most likely, they've not actually paid for it. No, the cost of the coffee is priced according to the designer wedge-shaped sugar packet. I never have sugar, and yet there it always is. Do they offer a discount for returning the sugar? Do they heck. That's why they don't get a tip.
GALES AND BENEFIT SEEKING
More gales hit during Sunday; the second lot in a few days. The worst of the weather affected the south, but the winds were still powerful in the north, though with only intermittent rain. Someone here had a wall go over. The strength of the gusts was at times quite frightening; God knows how bad it was in the south. Then yesterday it started fine, which, for the massive dole queue at the unemployment office in Puerto Alcúdia, must have been good news, until that is, it started to rain. All those people having to stand and wait in the elements; there is something not quite right with this. I thought it was just foreigners who were treated with disrespect by having to queue under a boiling sun or in the rain at the foreign affairs building in Palma. Not so; everyone is treated similarly. There has got to be a better way.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Great stuff - Underworld, "Born Slippy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlLWFa1b1Bc). Today's title - various songs with this title, but what about the one by a "lucky" Brummie pop group of the '60s and '70s?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, September 28, 2007
From Russia With Love
This is the season for statistics. I may have described them before as being “fatuous”, but they do serve a purpose if only for me to be able to point out apparent inconsistencies. Let’s take the case of Russian tourism, a market perceived as being well doshed-up and therefore of interest to any a tourist-based economy. Yesterday, I noted that Russian tourism to the Balearics in the months to end-August had risen by just over 4%. This is a figure provided by a Balearics organisation for investigation and touristic technologies - CITTIB. Today, “The Bulletin” reports the Balearic Minister for Tourism as saying that in the first seven months (i.e. till end-July) that figure was up by 12.4%. Now, there isn’t actually a discrepancy here, because if one adds the numbers for August alone, the total - for the EIGHT months - is just a touch under 23,000 (in line with the CITTIB figures), the Minister pointing out that the figure for the SEVEN months was 15,769. I hope you’re following all of this.
But what the Minister has done is to report a healthy percentage rise for seven months and not take into account the fact that Russian tourism in August fell by over 10% over 2006, hence the 4% figure for the EIGHT months. 12.4 sounds better than 4.2, I think it’s fair to say. Which just all goes to show - as ever - that you can prove whatever you want with statistics. Fatuous? No, that’s unfair, but they should be read and interpreted with caution.
COFFEE
Apparently there is a travelling exhibition going around designed to promote awareness of “fair trade” coffee from central America. Worthy stuff, but mention of coffee prompts me to spotlight someone who has contributed hugely to the Mallorcan and Spanish holiday and life experience. Indeed without him one could argue the whole experience would not be quite the same. Achille Gaggia. Who he?
Gaggia was a Milanese bar owner. In 1938, he patented the Espresso coffee machine. The smell of freshly-prepared coffee is satisfying enough wherever one is, but add that smell to the warmth of a morning on holiday and it is highly evocative. Gaggia said that the machine “makes it quite difficult to make really bad coffee”, something I wouldn’t necessarily concur with. There are places hereabouts that make fabulous coffee. Why it should vary so much I don’t really know, but - and by all means offer alternatives - the coffee at Cas Capella in Alcúdia takes some beating. Don’t ask me why.
(Source for Gaggia reference: Peter Hennessy, “Having It So Good: Britain In The Fifties”, Allen Lane, 2006.)
VERMAR
Binissalem is currently enjoying its annual wine and grape fiesta - the Vermar. This is a jolly old thrash. People tread grapes, roll in them, throw them, get smothered in them, and with all the rain around they make wine in the process. Given that sampling is an obvious feature of the event, best not to take the car, which is why No Frills’ day out to the Vermar on Sunday would have been an ideal excuse. But I can’t make it. Damn.
QUIZ
Yesterday - As rightly pointed out by Anne Marie just back from Puerto Pollensa, it was Rex Harrison. The female part was Julie Andrews in the stage version of “My Fair Lady” but not Audrey Hepburn in the film. As Aud was not reckoned to be much of a singer, the vocal was actually Marni Nixon. Today’s title - who sang this Bond theme tune?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
But what the Minister has done is to report a healthy percentage rise for seven months and not take into account the fact that Russian tourism in August fell by over 10% over 2006, hence the 4% figure for the EIGHT months. 12.4 sounds better than 4.2, I think it’s fair to say. Which just all goes to show - as ever - that you can prove whatever you want with statistics. Fatuous? No, that’s unfair, but they should be read and interpreted with caution.
COFFEE
Apparently there is a travelling exhibition going around designed to promote awareness of “fair trade” coffee from central America. Worthy stuff, but mention of coffee prompts me to spotlight someone who has contributed hugely to the Mallorcan and Spanish holiday and life experience. Indeed without him one could argue the whole experience would not be quite the same. Achille Gaggia. Who he?
Gaggia was a Milanese bar owner. In 1938, he patented the Espresso coffee machine. The smell of freshly-prepared coffee is satisfying enough wherever one is, but add that smell to the warmth of a morning on holiday and it is highly evocative. Gaggia said that the machine “makes it quite difficult to make really bad coffee”, something I wouldn’t necessarily concur with. There are places hereabouts that make fabulous coffee. Why it should vary so much I don’t really know, but - and by all means offer alternatives - the coffee at Cas Capella in Alcúdia takes some beating. Don’t ask me why.
(Source for Gaggia reference: Peter Hennessy, “Having It So Good: Britain In The Fifties”, Allen Lane, 2006.)
VERMAR
Binissalem is currently enjoying its annual wine and grape fiesta - the Vermar. This is a jolly old thrash. People tread grapes, roll in them, throw them, get smothered in them, and with all the rain around they make wine in the process. Given that sampling is an obvious feature of the event, best not to take the car, which is why No Frills’ day out to the Vermar on Sunday would have been an ideal excuse. But I can’t make it. Damn.
QUIZ
Yesterday - As rightly pointed out by Anne Marie just back from Puerto Pollensa, it was Rex Harrison. The female part was Julie Andrews in the stage version of “My Fair Lady” but not Audrey Hepburn in the film. As Aud was not reckoned to be much of a singer, the vocal was actually Marni Nixon. Today’s title - who sang this Bond theme tune?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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