Medium Raw

Years ago—so many now that few of us even remember—there was a time when most Americans had similar expectations of coffee as they have traditionally had of the hamburger. That a decent, cheap—but not necessarily great—cup of coffee in a cardboard container or heavy Buffalo china receptacle was a birthright. Coffee, it was generally accepted, did, and should, cost about fifty cents to a dollar—often with unlimited refills. Then Starbucks came along, whose particular genius was not the dissemination of such concepts as “latte,” “half-caf,” and “mochaccino,” or new terms for sizes, like “venti.” Nor did their brilliance lie in the particularly good quality of their coffee.

Starbucks’s truly beautiful idea was the simple realization that Americans wanted to spend more money for a cup of coffee, that they’d feel much better about themselves if they spent five dollars for a cup of joe rather than buy that cheap drip stuff that shows such as Friends suggested only fat white trash in housecoats (or people who actually worked for a living) drank anymore—in their trailer parks or meth labs or wherever such people huddled for comfort.

And America wanted to drink its coffee (or, more accurately, linger over it) in places that looked very much like…Starbucks, where young, attractive people (like the cast of Friends) sipped their coffees and spent their time and no doubt engaged in witty banter between cranberry muffins. To a faint soundtrack featuring the nonthreatening musical stylings of Natalie Merchant. For five bucks a pop.

A while ago, the guy behind the counter (and he sure as shit wasn’t called a “barista”) asked you for five bucks for a cup of coffee—any coffee—he’d better expect an argument, at least. Now? You wouldn’t blink. The entire valuation of coffee has changed while we weren’t looking.

This, I suspect, is what’s already happened and will continue to happen with the hamburger. The fashion industry figured this out long ago. Relatively few people could afford a Gucci suit. But they could surely afford a T-shirt with GUCCI printed on it. What’s happening is that five years from now, all those people who could never afford to eat at, say, Craft, will surely be able to buy a Tom Colicchio Burger. And I’m guessing, by the way, that—unlike a Chinese-made T-shirt with a logo on it—it’ll be a pretty good burger.

Things keep going the way they’re going, and the “good” burger, the designer burger, the one you’d entrust your child to, the one you want your friends to see you eating—that’ll be $24, please.

You’d think the major meat-packers should have seen this coming—should have seen that saving 30 cents a pound is all fine and good—but not when, a few years down the line, they risk losing the market. A few more E. coli outbreaks in fast-food outlets or school systems, and you’re likely to see a tail-off. Few parents are going to let their little Ambers or Tiffanys eat the stuff that they’re talking about on CNN all the time—next to the pictures of dead children and diseased animals. It’s really only a matter of time until—through a combination of successful demonization, genuine health concerns, and changing eating habits—America will actually start eating fewer of those gray disks of alleged “meat.”

If recent history has taught us anything, though, it’s that Big Food is way ahead of us with their market research. In all likelihood, when and if America sours on the generic burger, they’ll be waiting for us on the other end with open arms. As incisively pointed out in the documentary Food Inc., an overwhelmingly large percentage of “new,” “healthy,” and “organic” alternative food products are actually owned by the same parent companies that scared us into the organic aisle in the first place. “They got you comin’ and goin’” has never been truer. Like breaking a guy’s leg—so you can be there to sell him a crutch. “We’re here for you—when you get sick of, or too frightened of, our other product. Of course it’ll cost a little more. But then you expected that.”

Maybe an early warning sign, the beginning of a major shift in attitude came not from health concerns, or rising awareness, or the success of such excellent books as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but from whatever devious and cynical chef first came up with the concept of the “Kobe burger.”

He or she can hardly be blamed. The times when this seminal event occurred were surely ripe for it. New York City restaurants were clogged with loud, pin-striped, yet-to-be-indicted fuck-nuts hedge funders who relished the opportunity to showily throw a hundred dollars at a burger. Kobe, after all, was the “best” beef in the world, wasn’t it? It came from, like, Japan, from, like, special cows who get…massaged in beer and shit, don’t they? “I hear they even jack them off!!”