The Journal. - The Underdog Coffee Bean That’s Making a Comeback

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

We’re off today and tomorrow, but we still have a great episode for you.  For decades, the Robusta coffee bean has been the ugly duckling of the coffee world. Now, a new generation of coffee geeks think the time could be ripe for a Robusta revolution. WSJ’s Jon Emont explains why the humble bean is gaining momentum in the coffee industry. This episode originally published in March 2023. Further Reading:  -The Underdog Coffee Bean That Java Snobs Hate Is Finally Getting Some Respect  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, it's Kate. We're off today because of the July 4th holiday tomorrow, but we wanted to share an episode we made in March. It's about the rise of the lesser-known Robusta coffee bean. Here it is. The two main types of coffee beans are Robusta and Arabica. And for decades, one bean has dominated the other. You don't need to know how to pronounce Arabica beans. You just need to know how to drink them. That's coffee made with 100% Arabica beans.

McCafe believes in using 100% fine Arabica beans. What we do is use freshly ground Arabica beans and organic milk. You'll see a lot of big coffee companies, one of the ways that they communicate that they're serious about coffee is they say 100% Arabica. And there's lots of them. So it's just this sort of byword

for communicating good coffee is 100% Arabica. Our colleague John Iman says Robusta, meanwhile, has a reputation for being cheap and not very good. Robusta, it was treated as inferior. Starbucks on its website says its harsher taste is often compared to burnt rubber. Robusta in the way it's traditionally been grown and produced is very, very bitter. It tastes a bit like drinking, it tastes a bit like what I imagine fuel tastes like. It's intense. It's very intense.

Burnt rubber. Fuel. It sounds kind of gross. But recently there's been a new movement of people who say Robusta has just been given a bad rap. They say that not only can Robusta be good, but that it can also grow better in an era of climate change. A lot of the young coffee geeks and the folks who are founding cafes today who say, actually, we think Robusta can be good. One reason that animates a lot of young coffee geeks is global warming.

And so for some, it's actually a rebellion. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. Coming up on the show, the Robusta Rebellion that's brewing in the coffee industry. Your teen requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today.

Are you a big coffee drinker? I am. I think almost everybody is. I'm not as snobby as some people. I wouldn't call myself a real expert or anything. But reporting this piece, I spoke to a lot of real coffee geeks, and I learned that I wasn't one just through listening to them. One of the things John learned from all these conversations is that Arabica didn't always dominate Robusta.

Its rise in the U.S. started a few decades ago. It starts with this movement in the United States on the West Coast in the 1970s or around then, where coffee geeks decided to try to introduce good coffee to Americans, who at this point were mainly drinking instant coffee, and thought of coffee as something that would, you know, wake them up in the morning, but not as something to luxuriate over or to enjoy. Companies like Peet's and Starbucks looked at cafes in Europe to see how they could create a high quality experience for their customers, a coffee culture. And it worked. coffee culture.

And it worked. Coffee shops in the U.S. became a place where you could meet with friends, work on homework, write your screenplay, all over a good cup of coffee. And the beans that companies like Starbucks used were Arabica's. And what that ended up doing was it just created this idea

that Arabica was better than Robusta, which true or not sort of created this cycle where Arabica farmers, especially in recent years, could actually sell their coffee for more money if they actually invested in it, because there was this market for specialty coffees. Whereas with Robusta, it became this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Because it was treated as inferior, any Robusta farmer who invested in quality and in processing would not get that money back. No one was going to pay more for Robusta. So it just stayed where it was, essentially. Arabica won. And Robusta was relegated to the world of instant coffees, or as something that roasters mixed into a bag of Arabica beans

in order to make it cheaper. But Arabica always had one weakness. It's more difficult to grow. It is much more delicate than Robusta. It's much less pest-resistant. It does not do as well in the heat, whereas Robusta tended to do better in the intense heat. And as the climate changes, growing Arabica is becoming more expensive.

Arabica is really vulnerable to climate change. So in Brazil, for example, there's been a lot of weird weather that has really devastated the Arabica crop and sent Arabica prices up quite a bit in recent years, like sudden frosts and things like that. So that's one thing that some people will think, well, let's embrace Robusta. Robusta thrives in hotter weather, and that's becoming a big advantage.

There's thinking and then, you know, some science to back it up that Robusta really would do better in a world where climate's much less predictable and the world is warmer. And so we have to find coffee that's suited to the new ecology of the world. And we have to find a way to make it good. Even though Robusta grows better in warmer climates, no one will drink it if it doesn't taste good. So that's why this is so revolutionary. There's people saying, wait, but does it have to be like this? Does it have to taste like this? And when you say does it have to, is the idea that if you grow the beans differently or more delicately or you process them in a slightly different way, that you can actually make Robusta taste better?

Yes, that's right. That's absolutely the idea. And there's no question that that's true. I mean, there might be debate about how far you can go, but there's no question that you can make it better. One man who's been trying to make Robusta better is a farmer in India named Nishant Gurjur. I'm Nishant Gurjur,

so I'm the managing partner of Kapi Royal and Seturaman Estate, and I'm a sixth-generation coffee grower. Nishant's farm has been in his family for more than two centuries. And when he took over the farm in the 1990s, he made a risky decision. He ripped out his Arabica crops

and replaced them with Robusta. When you made this pivot from Arabica beans to Robusta beans back in the 90s, did anybody tell you that you were crazy at the time? A lot of people. I mean, everyone thought that I had gone cuckoo, you know, this young kid out of college and, you know, he's ripping apart his family business and he's growing Robusta and, you know, what's wrong with him and

how's he going to sell it? How, you know, it's crap coffee and all sorts of things, you know. Arabica doesn't grow so well in humid areas, like where Nishant's farm is. Why did you think Robusta might be better? I said that, okay, fine, we can be average Arabica producers, which we were. Or we can really up the ante and go totally different and go towards growing high-end specialty Robustas. I know it was swimming against the tide and people in 95, 96 didn't even know what Robusta was. Forget about specialty Robusta. Robusta was not even something

which people would want to talk about. I mean, it's like, I just potentially thought that, you know, it's easier for me to go with a product which people don't know or are not aware. But the reputation of Robusta beans, and the reason that Arabica beans are so much more popular, is that Robusta doesn't taste good. People will just grow up on this fallacy that Arabica is special and Robusta is bad. Yes, you do have very special Arabicas. I'm not trying to put down Arabica coffee. Arabicas do

have some very unique characteristics and flavors. What I don't like is people talking about the fact, saying that Arabica is good coffee, but Robusta is bad. Why can't people accept the fact that Robusta is good, Arabica is good? Taste it, give it a fair chance. If you like it, excellent. If you don't like it, you don't like it. I mean, that's fine.

After the break, I give Robusta a try. Need a great reason to get up in the morning? Well, what about two? Right now, get a small, organic Fairtrade coffee and a tasty bacon and egger breakfast sandwich for only $5 at A&W's in Ontario. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit.

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Hey, how are you doing? Hey, good, how are you? Good. Do you have any coffee made from Robusta beans? Oh, we don't. Yeah, no. I think they're all Arabica. Yeah.

Arabica. I'm with the Wall Street Journal on the podcast. Robusta is still pretty hard to find. In fact, none of the handful of coffee shops I went to served it. And when I asked baristas about it, it didn't really seem like they liked it. Would you guys mind sharing your opinion as coffee aficionados about Robusta Beans? About Robusta? Yeah. I think it's because they're cheaper.

Definitely a cheaper bean. I feel like the flavor profile on them when you roast them too after is just not the same quality as like Arabica. Yeah, and there's something about it. It's like darker and more bitter. I'm not really into it. It is more bitter and more bitter. I'm not really into it. It is more bitter in my opinion. What did you think of it when you tried it?

Me? I don't like coffee. You don't like coffee and you work in a coffee shop? We have a lot of tea here too, by the way. Eventually, I found a bag of Robusta beans at a grocery store. It was made by Nguyen Coffee Supply, a coffee roaster in Brooklyn that makes high-end Robusta. The beans, like, look almost a little bit different. They look sort of rounder and a

little bit lighter color. I brewed a cup with my trusty French press. Definitely has a much earthier smell to it, that's for sure. Hmm. I mean, it's definitely not bad. Robusta coffee is different from the coffee I'm used to. It's darker, richer, earthier. It's less acidic and more bitter. But this new type of Robusta definitely doesn't taste like fuel, the way John described.

A lot of the young coffee geeks and the folks who are founding cafes today who say, actually, we think Robusta can be good, they're trying to break that cycle. And what they're trying to do is they're saying, if we can create this specialty market for Robusta, if we can show Robusta farmers that if they invest in their crop, we'll pay more for it because it's good, because it's better,

then we'll actually be able to remove the stigma from Robusta because we'll prove to the world that there's nothing wrong with it. It's just a matter of how it was grown. For farmers that are struggling to grow Arabica, John says they're embracing this new demand for Robusta. It's growing really fast, and that's in part because in a couple different countries,

namely Brazil, a lot of farmers are switching to Robusta because they realize that it grows better in their region. Nguyen Coffee Supply, the company that made the beans I tried earlier, is one of the companies pushing hard to change Robusta's image. The company even started a pledge with more than 150 signatures to change the narrative around Robusta. For farmers, it is kind of an exciting time. Even if there is a stigma against it, it's worth a try.

For some, that means switching crops from Arabica to Robusta. But for others, it means just investing more in their Robusta, because there's now a market for it. And for mainstream coffee companies, John says Robusta could be in their future too. For instance, Pete's Coffee says it's starting to look into Robustas, and it might start serving them one day. How real do you think this move toward Robusta is? says it's starting to look into Robustas and it might start serving them one day.

How real do you think this move toward Robusta is? Or is it just like a marketing ploy by Big Coffee or Robusta growers, you know, who are trying to create a movement? Yeah. You know, I think obviously the people who I quoted in the story, I think they're all very genuine. So I think they do think Robusta has been dealt a bad hand and deserves to be given another shot. If you're cynical, you would say, well, this movement is great for coffee companies because it's actually just an opportunity for them to cut costs. And, you know, with Pete's, I don't think that this is really a cynical move on their part to say that we're exploring Robusta. I expect, actually, that they were struck by this idea that Robusta was just automatically relegated to lesser coffee. And they thought, well, wait, let's re-examine this. Let's see if Robusta can be good.

And there are all sorts of reasons why it might be good for the planet. And so let's give this a real look. So I don't really think this is a play by Big Coffee. But I do think Big Coffee could potentially serve to benefit from it in the end. Nishant, the Robusta grower in India, says in the future, he doesn't want people to even think about what kind of beans their coffee is made out of. Don't judge coffee based on Arabic or Robusta. Just let your senses and your taste buds take over. At least be open to the idea of tasting coffees,

tasting different experiences. I'm happy if you are happy because that is your moment, your space. When you have that cup of coffee, if it takes you back to a very happy memory space, I'm happy for that.

And that's what I want to contribute. That happiness should last with you for a long time. I'm really craving a cup of coffee after this conversation. Enjoy it, my friend. This episode was originally published in March 2023. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back on Wednesday with the first episode of our new series, With Great Power.

It's about the rise of superhero movies. You won't want to miss it. Thanks for listening. See you then.