LONDON'S NEW COFFEE SHOP

Illy's a tempest in Colombe's coffee cup
By Rick Nichols
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Published: 2004-02-05
Section: FEATURES FOOD-On the Side

The exact moment that the Illy caff sign jutted from the wall outside the stand-up coffee shop that Terry Berch McNally recently appended to her durable London Grill in Fairmount is, frankly, immaterial.
What is worth noting is that it wasn't there - nor did the European espresso giant have a presence to speak of anywhere else in Philadelphia - and then, a month or so ago, there it was.
This normally would not be remarkable. Coffee loyalties come and go: Right now Wal-Mart is testing a $1.25 cup of gourmet coffee (supplied by Kicks Coffee Cafe), in an effort to wean patrons from Starbucks, where the going rate is $1.40.
But in the rarefied world of ultra-premium beans, Philadelphia has been, for the last decade, decidedly, and faithfully, a La Colombe town - and London Grill, for most of that time, was among its steadfast loyalists.
La Colombe, which has hundreds of accounts in the city (and a growing base in New York and San Francisco) roasts in Port Richmond in a little, state-of-the art plant with a basketball hoop over the loading dock.
It has been the choice of the creme de la creme: Le Bec-Fin was an early customer. Top chocolatiers boasted of using it as flavoring. Its retail shop on 19th Street was a mecca for coffee aficionados - a resolutely singular cafe, the anti-Starbucks.
For La Colombe to get one pink slip, of course, isn't a big deal. From an initial 123 pounds a week, it now roasts more than 20,000. But the switch by London Grill - and a handful of other spots (Miel patisserie and Sansom Street Oyster House, to name two) - is a window on marketing at street-level, and on the small hurts and sweet nothings that, over time, can constitute grounds for divorce.
Talk to McNally for a few minutes, and she'll tell you she wasn't dissatisfied with La Colombe. She was just looking to be distinctive in a neighborhood where everyone around her was offering it.
Talk a little longer, over a cup of her new Illy coffee and, well, perhaps she was feeling taken for granted.
La Colombe's owners, puppy-dog-eyed Jean-Philippe Imberti and the more-swaggering Todd Carmichael, didn't drop by anymore: "Maybe they were too busy hustling New York City."
When Illy agreed to throw in the outdoor sign that McNally coveted ("Just like the ones all over Italy"), she decided to give it a whirl.
The fact is that Illy, roasted in Trieste, Italy, and aged in high-tech cans, costs about $1.50 more per pound than La Colombe. On the other hand, Illy has the cachet of a global brand of 70 years standing.
But like politics, all business is, in the end, local. La Colombe's push into New York - traditional Illy territory - was bound to result in blowback.
Illy signed up Philadelphia's well-connected Joel Assouline, the caviar merchant and restaurant purveyor, as its rep in the city. He knew where fault lines - and opportunities - could be exploited.
A couple years ago, La Colombe's 19th Street shop quit buying croissants from Robert Bennett, the former Le Bec pastry chef who had gone into business for himself. (La Colombe had switched at the time to Georges Perrier, Le Bec's chief and nowadays a Bennett rival.)
So when it came time last December for Bennett to open his storefront patisserie on 17th Street, he dropped his old friends from La Colombe, instead prominently placing new Illy urns in the window.
If there weren't going to be Bennett croissants at La Colombe, there sure as heck wouldn't be any La Colombe coffee at Bennett's new Miel.
It's a small town. The competitors know that what goes around comes around. Illy rep Assouline is manifestly diplomatic. La Colombe is still very good coffee, he says. At La Colombe, Todd Carmichael is equally deferential - "I'm a fan of Illy."
But he bristles at the venerable Illy's caffeinated lunge, "changing tacks, strategies, giving away machinery like candy. It's like seeing a famous older writer, say, Hemingway writing sitcoms. It's embarrassing."
Carmichael's partner, Imberti, insists that customers who switch to Illy will be back. The only fish that got away in New York - and stayed away - he says, was Eric Ripert's celebrated Le Bernardin: "And that's because Illy paid for the photography in its new cookbook."
At London Grill, Terry Berch McNally is nothing if not ambivalent.
In the cooler next to her new Illy grinder, she still has two big bags of La Colombe beans.
Just in case.
Contact food columnist Rick Nichols at 215 854 2715 or rnichols@phillynews.com.
Illustration/Photo: BONNIE WELLER / Inquirer Staff Photographer
A sign outside the London Grill's new coffee shop proclaims the presence of the Italian bean, Illy. Illy and La Colombe are rivals in parts of Philadelphia.
© Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
All content is copyrighted and may not be republished without permission.

<<Back to All Press/Review Items