Coffee Marketing
Many peple over the years have devlped many more ways of serving this delicious coffee cup.
Today, coffee is a giant global industry employing more than 20 million people. This commodity ranks second only to petroleum in terms of dollars traded worldwide. With over 400 billion cups consumed every year, coffee is the world's most popular beverage. If you can imagine, in Brazil alone, over 5 million people are employed in the cultivation and harvesting of over 3 billion coffee plants.
Sales of premium specialty coffees in the United States have reached the multi billion-dollar level, and are increasing significantly on an annual basis
There is evidence, however, to suggest that coffee trees were cultivated in monastery gardens 1,000 years ago. According to folklore, a goat herder called Kaldi noticed that even the oldest goats behaved like young kids when they ate certain wild berries. Upon hearing this, the Abbot of the local monastery decided to experiment. He found that a brew of these ‘cherries’ could keep his brother monks awake through long hours of prayer.
Coffee's Global appeal
The last three hundred years have seen coffee make its way around the world, establishing itself in the economies and lifestyles of the main trading nations. Coffee is now one of the most valuable primary commodities in the world, often second in value only to oil as a source of foreign exchange to developing countries. Millions of people around the world earn their living from the coffee industry.
At times in history coffee has been hailed as a medicinal cure-all, and at others condemned as the devil's brew - in the latter case usually for political or religious reasons, when coffee houses were at their height of popularity as meeting places. However, in the last half-century scientific research has established the facts about coffee, caffeine (responsible for coffee's mild stimulant effect) and our health: in moderation coffee consumption is in no way a health risk, and besides being a most pleasurable experience drinking coffee can indeed confer some health benefits. For more information on coffee and health click here.
