Starbucked
Chapter One
Life Before Lattes
Nearly a century ago, mankind discovered the secrets of the perfect
cup of coffee.
These eternal truths revealed themselves not through ghostly
messages in the steam of a Wisconsin secretary's cup of Yuban, but
instead through a modern-day prophet of foodstuffs: Samuel Cate
Prescott, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who, in
the first decades of the twentieth century, was one of the world's
top food scientists. Prescott liked to imagine a future in which
scientific analysis would make foods not just safer but ideal. A
contemporary Boston Daily Advertiser story on him even predicted
that one day, thanks to his efforts, the "application of
growth-producing rays will bring forth cows the size of brontosauri,
roosters the size of pterodactyls."
In 1920, Prescott's talents attracted the attention of the National
Coffee Roasters Association, a group that had long been searching
for a novel way to boost sluggish coffee sales. After bankrolling a
string of ineffective publicity campaigns, the roasters decided it
was time fo ... read full excerpt from: Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture ebook
