
Competition is hotting up in the coffee industry - NicoJuicy
https://www.economist.com/business/2018/10/13/competition-is-hotting-up-in-the-coffee-industry
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simple10
"Hotting up" is idiomatic in Britain.

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/384556/hotting-u...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/384556/hotting-
up-vs-heating-up)

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anoncoward111
As an American who has worked 6 months in the UK, I never once heard this.

An equally rare but still extant US slang phrase is probably something like
"aint finna" or "i'm not about that life"

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BugsJustFindMe
"finna" is a hypercontraction of "fitting to" (via fit'n'ta) which comes from
"fixing to" or "about (going) to". So "aint finna" is really "I'm not about
to", which makes the connection to "I'm not about that life" more clear.

[edited to add the connection between fitting and fixing]

[edit2, fun asides aside, I don't see what relevance this has to the original
comment about hotting up.]

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anoncoward111
Really confused why I'm being downvoted and why you are explaining what finna
means.

I'll restate the purpose of my comment again, in detail:

1) I said that I worked in the UK for six (6) months.

2) I said that I never once heard the phrase "hotting up", despite us often
saying "make some tea" and etc.

3) I then compared the rarity of the expression "hotting up" to the rarity of
certain "American" phrases.

4) I ultimately concluded that though all of these phrases exist and are used
by English speakers, they are rare and niche.

5) That is to say, they are relatively obscure and not extremely widespread.

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evgen
If you have not heard the phrase 'hotting up' then you have obviously not
watched a TV weather report or really paid attention to your peers when they
talk about the weather. It is extremely common here to use the term when
describing weather that is going to become warmer over the near term.

It is not rare, but its usage tends to be a bit narrow and is now most
commonly applied to weather or to competition (as in 'the contest is hotting
up' where an American would use 'heating up'.)

You are being downvoted for being wrong and suggesting that your limited
experience and apparent lack of awareness is indicative of the rarity of this
expression.

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anoncoward111
This comment is really representative of human ego and over-confidence. Note
that I cannot downvote you, but you can downvote me.

I offered an anecdote, you offered an anecdote. Many of my UK colleagues said
"heating up a pot of tea".

But, since you are so very confident of yourself and your country, you swear
to me that my experience is so wrong that people should not believe it
happened.

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evgen
You heat up a pot of tea (or would generally just say you are going to put the
kettle on), you do not 'hot up the tea'. The usage is specific, which is
probably why you did not notice it or pay much attention if you did hear it.
OTOH, it is a very common usage when describing weather or competition.

It does not take much effort to do a bit of an online search to see that the
comment you were replying to was in fact correct that this term is idiomatic
British English. This is not anecdote and is easily demonstrated through
thousands of examples that are but a short google search away.

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pathseeker
>demonstrated through thousands of examples that are but a short google search
away.

There are also thousands of examples of bequeath but a short google search a
way but that doesn't mean anything about its place in modern language.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=hotting%20...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=hotting%20up,heating%20up)

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arcticfox
This would be interesting to read about, but this article seems very light on
anything interesting to me. It's mostly just a summary of acquisitions and
mergers.

I'm curious if any coffee fans here have any Stratechery-type thoughts on the
future of the industry.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Well, the consolidation itself is kind of interesting, I think; while retail
food service brands have certainly gone through consolidations before, the
restaurant and cafe industry hasn't been quite as subject to it. (Not to say
that it doesn't happen, but the biggest operators tend to spin off and trade
brands as often as they buy them, like Red Lobster being spun off from Darden,
or A&W and Long John Silver's being spun off from Yum! Brands -- yes, that
local fast food place that's a joint A&W and KFC is actually two separate
companies now.)

Something that this piece hints at but doesn't underline well is just how big
JAB Holding Company has quietly become in the last ~5 years: they now outright
own or have controlling/majority interest in Bruegger's Bagels, Canada Dry,
Caribou Coffee Company, Dr Pepper, Einstein's Bagels, Green Mountain Coffee,
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Keurig, Krispy Kreme,
Mighty Leaf Tea, Noah's Bagels, Panera Bread, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Snapple,
and Stumptown Coffee. That is a _big_ company. Nestlé's coffee brands aren't
all that well known over here, despite the push to get people to pay attention
to Nespresso.

Personally, I remain unconvinced that there's a huge untapped market for
"better" home coffee and espresso brewers in the US; while this sounds like a
setup for a "quality, convenience, and price, pick any two" joke, in practice,
it seems like you can pick either quality _or_ convenience, regardless of
price. Keurig machines simply don't make very good coffee; a consumer who
finds a Mr. Coffee too fiddly is _not_ going to be swayed by a coffee nerd
with an Aeropress; and given that Americans don't seem to love espresso drinks
unless they're fiddly steamed milk and syrup based concoctions, even a
Nespresso machine isn't going to help much with the convenience aspect. JAB's
signing a deal with Illy, what led to this Economist article, doesn't seem
like it's really going to move the needle much over here, at least; a Keurig
capsule full of Illy coffee will still be a Keurig capsule, and Illy's capsule
machine that's a competitor to the Nespresso isn't likely to do any better
here than any of the other Nespresso also-rans.

(I am, for the record, a coffee nerd with an Aeropress. And a Technivorm, a
few different single cup dripper gadgets, a Chemex, and, yes, a Nespresso.)

~~~
beloch
The best blend of quality and convenience I've found so far is a french press.
They're less fiddly and messy than an aeropress (I own one and never use it),
cheaper than a drip machine, easy to clean, and produce good coffee. The only
drawback is that you do need a decent grinder. A cheap spinning-blade grinder
will produce a mix of large grounds and powder that will clog the mesh.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I have a French press, too. I like it, although I am not sure I would agree
that it's less messy than an Aeropress, and I think it works best with darker
roasts than lighter ones. But, none of the "good coffee gadgets" address the
"I want something faster and more convenient than a Mr. Coffee" market that
Keurig is going for. I'm not convinced you can get Keurig speed and
convenience _and_ get good coffee.

~~~
landon32
The way I see it, there are 2 factors that make it hard to get keurig speed +
convenience and good coffee:

1) Since brew time is a function of temperature and ground size, K-pods can
use hotter water and finely ground coffee to speed up extraction of the coffee
grounds, even if it results in sub-optimal flavors.

2) K-Pods probably have a complicated supply chain that would make it hard to
ship fresh roasted + ground coffee. I'm sure this could be circumvented
somehow, but it would most likely require an expensive solution since it's so
time sensitive.(ideally you have coffee ground just minutes before brewing, or
at least less than a week before brewing.)

Honestly, instant coffee is probably the best solution for extreme convenience
+ great coffee. Folgers instant is awful, but companies like Sudden are trying
to make a decent crystallized coffee:
[https://www.suddencoffee.com/](https://www.suddencoffee.com/)

~~~
chipotle_coyote
While it's been a _really long time_ since I had a Keurig, I seem to remember
that they used around 200°F water, and when I had one of the little "use your
own grounds" containers for it, if I got the water-to-coffee ratio right it it
was...decent. While it brews fast, it brews under just a little pressure, kind
of like an Aeropress.

That was before Keurig had been bought by Green Mountain, though, and it
seemed like they were _trying_ to manage as good coffee as they could out of
K-Cups. They were contracting mostly with specialty coffee roasters, and the
K-Cups were filled with nitrogen to try and preserve the flavor. There were a
couple I found that I did actually like, although I don't know if I would if I
tried them again. :) My impression is that Keurig's quality control has gone
down over the years, certainly with the machines, and one suspects the coffee.

I've heard of Sudden before -- positively, from people who really care about
coffee -- but haven't tried them. I probably should. I've taken a few trips to
places where the nearest good coffee was quite a distance away. :)

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stephengillie
This is an ad for coffee pods, disgised as investment news.

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bnolsen
dunno as the economist paywalls this article for me. i guess i clicked too
many links into their site...

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jtokoph
The title "Competition is hotting up" should really be "Competition is heating
up", right? Is there some play on words here that I don't understand? Using
the word "heating" is both grammatically correct and works with the word play.
Does the economist lack editing staff?

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whorleater
"Hotting up" is a British idiom meaning the same as "heating up". The
economist is British. Not everyone speaks American English.

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jtokoph
Ah, that makes sense.

