A response in full

In response to the ongoing twitter discussion about criticism in coffee:

People in the industry are often nothing but nice publicly about coffees/companies because there is an inevitable conflict of interest.  There is currency in public praise, while there is none in public criticism.

If you only look at the industry’s public words (i.e. twitter etc) then it should be no surprise to find general positivity.  If you watch consumer twitter feeds/forums/blogs then you find this isn’t the case.

However, professional criticism of the industry would be hugely useful.  Someone who is informed, but has minimal conflicts, commenting and assessing what we do would be wonderful.  Be it testing coffees, writing competent reviews of cafes, or writing good equipment reviews - there is opportunity I believe to do this for a living if someone is smart about it. And good at it.

I think criticism would be great from an educational standpoint, from increasing accountability, but looking to the industry to do this is unrealistic and frankly would be bad for us.