Coffee as a metric of business success - 13 December 2022

Coffee was not always my favorite beverage.  For a long time, I drank tea, both hot and iced.  At some point in college, I learned to drink coffee.  It would be more accurate to say that I trained myself to drink coffee for in the early days I did not like the actual taste of coffee; I merely tolerated it because of the caffeine and the warmth.  

I was an engineering co-op student in college.  At Purdue University, this meant that one alternated semesters of work and school.  Freshman and Senior years were two semesters and the intervening Sophmore and Junior years were spread across three years' duration with work semesters filling the time.  In my case, I worked During one of the work semesters and decided that I needed coffee to keep up with my work and social plans.  This was reinforced by the fact that the company provided free coffee.  

The company was a small company that made medical computing equipment.  Today, we would call them a start-up, but then it was simply "a small company".  Several departments were under one roof - business, marketing, manufacturing, test, and engineering - and there was a designated cafeteria.  There was no food service, no microwave ovens, no refrigerators, and no vending machines, but there were tables, chairs, and a coffee pot.  It was the kind of coffee pot that used paper filters to hold the coffee grounds that was brewed into glass carafes.  A coffee service provide packets of coffee containing the proper measure of grounds.  I quickly learned how to brew coffee as I tended to come in (relatively) early, and this got me warm and moving in the morning.  

The company made medical equipment and computers.  The computers generated a lot of heat and needed to be kept cool.  Because they were all minicomputers, there was no computer room - the computers were everywhere and so the entire building was kept cold.  I took a sweater to work even in the summer, because it was so doggone cold.  To help counter the cold, I decided to start drinking coffee.

I started with everything to hid the tast of the coffee:  creamer and sugar.  The creamer and sugar helped to cut the acidity.  It was powdered creamer because we had no refrigerator for dairy products.  Over time, I eliminated the sugar and then the creamer and became a convert to black coffee.  

This rather stunning conversion was facilitated by the fact that the coffee was Yuban in foil packets.  The brand seems to have been lost, but Yuban was considered a premium coffee at the time as the foil packaging attests.  The foil sealed the coffee well and helped keep it fresh.  At the end of the semester, I wrapped up work and returned to my university studies.  When I returned, the company was still producing computerized medical equipment, but the business was not as high flying as when I had left: the development engineering of the new products was costing more than expected and competition had entered the market to grab for those sweet profits.  While I am sure there were many things done to control costs, the one that struck me as a co-op was the change in coffee.  From Yuban in foil packets, the supply changed to Folgers in plastic packets.  The corresponding change in coffee quality was noticecable, but I was not deterred and I resumed drinking black coffee.  After the semester passed, I returned to university, and then came back to work.  Competition was fierce in the medical computing business and more belt-tightening had been applied.  The coffee was still provided by the company, but it had been changed from Folgers in plastic bags to Mr. Nick-L-Cup in paper bags.  It was tough.  The coffee was not bad, but it really needed help.  I think I kept drinking it black, but I cut back.  By the time I returned to my studies, I had pretty much abandoned coffee and stayed that way for several years.  I went back to tea and did not return to coffee until I was able to grind and brew it fresh in my own kitchen.

The business metric in the title is a simple observation.  Companies are generous when the times are good, but when the quality and quantity of the benefits start dropping, it is a sign that the company is not doing well.

When I graduated, the company was doing well enough to make me an offer for a permanent position, but it was the lowest offer I received.  And, by that time, I was concerned about the future success of the company, so I took another offer.