Eight O'Clock Coffee, It's No Time to Change

By now you've probably heard that Eight O'Clock Coffee, a relatively cheapo brand available at any supermarket, ground up its frou-frou competition in Consumer Reports' ranking of the best buys in caffeinated Colombian coffee. In your face, Gloria Jean's! Buck you, Starbucks! At $11.76 a pound, the closest competitor, Caribou Coffee, cost almost double Eight O'Clock's modest $6.28.

We got no gripes about the ranking: the Pink household's been drinking Eight O'Clock for years and can vouch for its robust body and bright, slightly puckering taste. But right on the heels of this honor comes news that the 150-year-old company is ditching the simple, homespun cool of its old-timey packaging for something newer, sleeker, fresher. They're sweetening the bitter pill with some kind of contest--but why tamper with something whose lack of pretension is part of what makes it great?

The defiantly old-school Eight O'Clock packaging evokes the morning brew of yore. You don't cut it with Coffee-Mate; you skim the cream off the bottle old Pete the milkman left on the back doorstep. In the frosty gleam of dawn, you can hear it, can't you--the faint ah-OOGAH! of his horn. No, wait, that's the sausage biscuit I got this morning at Mapco. Whatever. Eight O'Clock's current packaging says: Slow down. What's your hurry. I'm not going anywhere.

So consider this a plea from somebody who knew you way back when: Eight O'Clock Coffee, don't ever change.


Source: blogs.nashvillescene.com