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Coffee Break: I Want to Have an Idea THIS Good

12 Oct

I don’t normally dine in McDonald’s because the one item on their menu I like – the Sausage and Egg McMuffin – stops getting served way too early for me. But there is a shopping centre (mall, American friends) in Cork that has the most horrendously inadequate offering of coffee-drinking options of any place in the civilized world and so after seeing Jurassic Park a couple of weeks back we were forced to get some McDonald’s coffee in the food court.

Which is how I discovered that someone at McDonald’s has had a brilliant idea.

(Or, potentially, stolen it from someone else. But someone has had a brilliant idea.)

In theory, a coffee (or other hot beverage) loyalty card is a great idea. You’re buying coffees from the same place on a regular basis, so why wouldn’t you want to get a free coffee after every five or ten purchases? And of course it benefits the store, because on that morning you almost hit another cafe for a bit of a change, you remember your loyalty card and make like you’re loyal.

But in practice, loyalty cards are a pain in the arse. The company has to get them designed, produced and then kept in stock, and the staff have to remember to keep them to hand by the register and/or offer to hand them out. When a coffee is ordered, they also have to remember to ask if the customer has a loyalty card, and then they have to stamp the card, if the little stamp-thingy hasn’t been lost since its last use, or dried out by that weirdo who works Friday nights and spends his time tattooing his arms with it. The customer has to remember to bring the loyalty card with them, which is where I always fell down. I’d leave the office with cash in my hand, leaving the card in my wallet back at my desk. The cashier would give me a new loyalty card so the purchase wasn’t “wasted”, a practice that eventually filled with wallet with single-stamp loyalty cards. So, no free coffee for me.

I couldn’t find a single suitable image of the loyalty card-embedded coffee cup, and I didn’t have the foresight to take one. So you’ll just have to use your imagination.

McDonald’s have, in one move, removed all these problems. The sleeve of the cup has a loyalty card within it that you can easily peel off, along with a sticker to get your loyalty card started. If you already have one of the cards, you just peel off the sticker to add to it. With you having that cup in front of you for at least as long as it takes you to drink the coffee, you won’t forget to peel off the sticker. Even if your card is back in the office, you’re probably taking your coffee back there anyway. At no point does the staff have to get involved in the operation and as the card is part of the sleeve, if it’s unwanted there’s no additional waste.

It’s just all kinds of great, isn’t it? I’m an avid watcher of shows like Dragon’s Den and I can’t recall anybody coming in with an idea as simple as this that solves as many problems. Sure, those problems aren’t world hunger or global warming or anything, but it’s still good stuff.

I hope I can have an idea as good as this someday. Of course I hope mine is more along the lines of “How to sell a gazillion books a minute” or something, but still. I live in hope.

The Results Not Typical blog tour continues! Imagine your surprise. Yesterday I was on Writer’s Rest, the lovely blog home of Cel and Anna author Lindsay Edmunds, answering questions about creating fiction versus writing non-fiction, writing snacks and the benefits of drinking gallons of water mixed with lemon juice and pepper. (Spoiler alert: there are none.) Today I’m over on the lovely Mel’s High Heels and Book Deals, with an ode to flip-flops. Yes, I know they’re not technically high heels, but I love than more because I can actually work in them. Find out more about the RNT blog tour here. 

Catherine’s Coffee Breaks: Trying Taiwanese Coffee

20 Jul

I love trying new and different types of coffee and so was delighted when Laura, one of my loveliest blog readers, sent me some Taiwanese coffee to try. Not only was the coffee all types of delicious but its delivery system was ingenious.

The coffee came in flat little pouches with handles folded into their sides (above) that when pulled out hooked onto the side of a cup. All you needed to do then was tear off the top to open the pouch and fill it with as much hot water as you wanted coffee. You had to fill it three or four times to fill a cup, but it drained really quickly. I loved the coffee and I loved the pouches.

Unfortunately Laura got them from her parents-in-law and although she thinks they might be available from certain Asian supermarkets, I haven’t managed to locate them here yet. Still looking, though.

You can buy one-cup disposable filters here but nothing as tasty (or as cool!) as this, as far as I’m aware. The best I’ve tried are Rombouts’ individual one-cup filters which I found excruciatingly slow to drain and the fact that they’re plastic kinda turns me off. They do make nice coffee though.

Special thanks to Laura for the coffee – which, in an added bonus, arrived on my birthday!

Click here to read all my coffee breaks.

A reminder: you can now order signed copies of Backpacked, along with Mousetrapped and or Self-Printed if you are so inclined. All orders ship with an exclusive preview of my debut novel, Results Not Typical. I know what you’re thinking – next I’ll be bringing out a pyramid of Ferreo Rocher…

Did You Know Coffee Caused The Enlightenment?

30 Jun

Let’s all learn something about coffee this morning. Thanks to Elizabeth for pointing me in the direction of this amazing video.

(If you can’t see this amazing video, click here.)

Basically coffee is awesome and at the rate I drink it, I’m going to live forever.

(And yes, today you only get a video because I have to send Backpacked to Sarah, copyeditor extraordinaire, a week from Monday. Yikes!)

Coffee Break: Coffee to Write Travel Memoirs With

23 Jun

I’ve told Sarah, Backpacked‘s copyeditor, that I’ll be sending her the finished manuscript at the end of this month. I have to, if I’m to have any hope of sticking to my own schedule and getting the book out in September.

Or even, sometime before Christmas.

(Joke! It is coming out in September. Don’t worry. Not too much, anyway.)

The book – surprise, surprise – isn’t finished, but I do have a whole seven days to work on it, fifteen days if I work to my actual self-imposed deadline of July 8th and not my scare-myself-into-doing-it false first deadline. But I am an ickle bit behind on my word count and so am going to have to put in a few very early mornings and a few very long days, and to do that I’m going to need a lot of coffee.

Yes – even more coffee than usual.

The coffee I normally drink is Robert Roberts’ American Blend and since I go through about a bag of it a week, I was delighted when they asked me to try their new New York Roast. It has a strength of 6 and since American is 3, I was a little bit scared of it but its flavor, while strong, was not at all bitter, had no yucky aftertaste and was actually really, really nice.

It’s my new breakfast coffee, and its lovely yellow cab reminds me to hurry up and write more books so I can go back to New York and spend an entire day in the basement of The Strand…

[Drifts off into New York daydream...]

And fun fact: it’s a cup of New York Roast that’s now immortalized forever on the cover of Backpacked.

So for the next couple of weeks while I finished Backpacked, I’m going to be alternating between the two: New York Roast in the morning, to wake me right up, and then American Blend from lunch time onwards, to keep me awake. I’ll also be throwing in the odd cup of their Guatemala Blend because, hey, Backpacked starts (and spends most of its time in) Guatemala.

In fact I can get coffee from three of the five countries Backpacked treks through, so I might just have to give a few bags away when it comes out.

If I haven’t drank them all, of course.

Click here to find out more about Robert Roberts. New York Roast is the first 6 strength coffee to be produced here in Ireland. Irish writer friends: you can find their coffee in Dunnes, Superquinn and Tescos. 

Click here to read all my coffee breaks. 

Coffee Break: It’s Trenta Time!

27 Jan

You may have heard that Starbucks recently announced plans to introduce a new cup size, the Trenta. This comes fresh on the heels of news that the company, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, is to change its famed ‘Siren’ logo into something sucky.

CREDIT: NationalPost.com

At a somewhat intimidating 930ml, the Trenta is 325ml more than Starbucks’ current biggest size, the Venti, and as Canada’s National Post were quick to point out with the graphic above, 30ml more than the average human stomach is designed to hold. Combine this with the fact that in all likelihood, your trenta cup will be holding something with caffeine in it (which speeds everything up, if you get my drift), you’ll be so busy running back and forth to the bathroom you won’t have time to finish it.

For now the trenta is only available in a small number of US states, and only for iced beverages. This is a good thing as first of all, I’m trying to be on a diet and, second of all, how would nearly a liter of regular coffee stay hot enough long enough for you to drink it?

I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve always done: order a venti latte but without any foam. (A “wet” latte in Starbucks lingo. Don’t get me started…) This way, you get a lot more coffee and you get to hang around long enough to drink it. And drink it hot.

Click here to read all my coffee breaks.

Coffee Break: Eight O’Clock Coffee

10 Sep

For this morning’s coffee break, let’s both go back to September 2007.

I’d been in Orlando for exactly a year. A number of seemingly unrelated events (me being bored, my Andy Garcia-lookalike manager not liking me, an ill-timed roll of the eyes) had conspired to promote me or, more accurately, banish me to the Housekeeping department of our 1,500-room hotel. I went from Front Desk where I wore a suit and heels, clicked buttons and smiled at guests, to running up and down halls, sweaty and stressed, crawling on my hands and knees through bathrooms left soiled by strangers, cleaning up “protein spills” (Mousespeak for vomit), dragging vacuums and cleaning carts and doing everything I could to make the 150 room checks I was supposed to get done in every eight hour day. (Impossible; it never happened.) At night, I’d just about manage to eat Quizzno’s for dinner before collapsing into bed, where I’d dream about the incessant beep beep of my Nextel radio – they’re sent from Satan, as far as I’m concerned – and dread the thought of having to do it all over again the next day.

But I had to do it all over again the next day, and that’s where my friend coffee came in.

Don’t get me wrong: prior to this, I was already a certifiable caffeine addict. But once I pulled on the god awful tan man’s shirt that represented us Housekeeping Inspectors, tied the laces of the ugly black trainers I’d bought in Wal-Mart for $7 and clipped that goddamn beeping radio to my belt, I was pretty much living on the stuff. It was the only way I could get through the day.

Soon I realized that as much as I loved them, I couldn’t afford to continue picking up a $4 venti latte (triple shot, extra hot, no foam) on the way to work every morning. The budget just wouldn’t allow. So one sunny morning – they were all sunny; this was Central Florida – I drove to Target and picked up a coffee machine for $9. Yes, $9 – not even twice the price of a venti latte. Next, I drove to Publix where I got a tube of disposable travel cups so drinking en route to work wouldn’t cause a burn injury, and the cheapest, most decent looking bag of ground coffee I could find. This turned out to be Eight O’Clock Coffee.

I just love the stuff. It’s such a nice coffee to drink (sometimes continuously!) throughout the day: medium, smooth and easy on the wallet. Problem is, they don’t sell it outside of the US, so I have to stock up on my non-too-frequent Florida visits, or annoy other people who are going there to bring some back for me.

Well, nothing’s perfect, I suppose…

Click here to follow Eight O’Clock coffee on Twitter.

Click here to buy Eight O’Clock coffee from Amazon.com (US only).

Click here to read all of Catherine’s Coffee Breaks.

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