A Good Cup of Coffee Is Hard to Find

Coffee importer Charles Behre says that when he started in the business in 1922, “you couldn’t get a bum cup of coffee in town.”

Today, he thinks, “quality is a thing of the past.”

Behre began learning the trade with the C. E. Bickford firm when there were two dozen coffee importers bringing a million bags of green coffee beans a year into San Francisco’s port.

There are now fewer than half a dozen importers in the city, which is still, as it was in 1922, third in coffee imports behind New York and New Orleans.

‘Cup Quality’

The Bickford firm pioneered the practice of “cup quality,” rather than judging coffee by beans alone. This created demand for high-grown Central American coffee, which before had been overlooked because of the beans were small.

“I was taught the business from the ground up, “ said Behre, who works for Cofinco Inc. “You took it from there.”

He said that in the old days, “you had to be able to cup, you had to be able to grade, you had to go through all the stages.”

Not so today, Behre said.

He said the New York office of Cofinco recently bought what was supposed to be a new crop of Peruvian beans. He wanted to taste it and a sample was sent to San Francisco.

“That crop was as old as me,” Behre said. “The guys didn’t know what they were doing. Goes on all the time.”

Finding a Good Cup

It’s still possible to get a good cup of coffee, but not simply by easing on to a stool at the nearest diner and ordering some java.

In recent years, small “gourmet” coffee roasters in San Francisco have been sparking a change in the industry.

United Coffee roasts coffee 75 different ways.

United started out in the institutional coffee business more than 60 years ago, selling coffee to restaurants. About 12 years ago, it got into the whole-bean gourmet trade.

It was really a process of responding to what the finer restaurants and wholesalers wanted in the way of a roast, said Phil Rancatore, a United senior vice president.

The gourmet trade accounts for only about 3% of the $4.5-billion coffee industry in the United States, but it is growing while other coffee consumption is down.