How far will you go for that perfect cup of coffee?

Have you noticed that more and more products these days seems to be available in new and more enticing flavors? I first noticed it years ago with Schnapps – peach and peppermint flavors have long been available – then with vodkas, and a friend in England tells me flavored gins are now a thing. And, of course, there’s coffee.

Coffee has been around forever, but in my lifetime it seems like it has been Starbucks that brought flavored coffee to the mainstream. When I think back to the coffee pot in the old newspaper newsroom, the only flavoring available was sugar and some powdered creamer. Starbucks brought sophistication to coffee and convinced us that four or five dollars was a fair price to pay for a cup.

I recently discovered cinnamon coffee and have found myself rather addicted to it. Not a five dollar holiday version at Starbucks or Costa or Pret A Manger, but a simple cinnamon roast marketed locally here in Texas. I found it at a small local bakery in Bellville, Texas on a weekend motorcycle ride. I really enjoyed the smooth flavor and light after taste  the cinnamon created.

The coffee made such an impression on me that I decided to try and recreate the cinnamon coffee experience using my own coffee brewer and cinnamon sticks. This was significant, as coffee habits go, because I was a Keurig man at that point in time, and also a big fan of the Caramel Machiato at Starbucks. But I was suffering some cognitive dissonance over using a Keurig every day – so much waste – and the Starbucks was just too expensive. Suddenly I saw a real opportunity to help the environment and feed my growing passion for coffee.

But it didn’t work out. Turns out that putting real flavor in coffee requires more than dropping cinnamon sticks into a fresh-brewed pot.

Not long after, on another weekend ride to that country cafe  – Newman’s Bakery – (more about it here), I discovered that they sell the cinnamon ground coffee by the bag! It was a flavor called Texas Cinnamon and marketed under the brand of Bright and Early Coffee. With a bag of ground coffee in hand, I could now brew my own! And so I did.

In addition, it seemed I had found the perfect synergy of coffee and motorcycle riding. I would ride to Newman’s when my coffee supply ran low, enjoy a fresh-brewed cup with breakfast at the bakery, then buy up one or two bags of ground cinnamon coffee – all with the dopamine rush of a motorcycle ride in the process.

But something strange happened one Saturday when I rode to Newman’s for a restock. I walked through the door, greeted as always by the smell of fresh coffee, baked goods, and bacon cooking on the grill, but to my horror discovered they were out of ground cinnamon coffee. This was a potential crisis that required immediate action!

I stopped by my neighborhood HEB grocery store on my ride home, but found no Bright and Early cinnamon coffee. The next grocery store I checked also didn’t have it – or any cinnamon coffee for that matter.  I went without cinnamon coffee for a few days, but on Saturday morning I lit off again for Newman’s Bakery – only to find them again out of stock. But wait, there in the corner was a package of K-cups (for the Keurig brewer)  – in Texas Cinnamon flavor!! My habit was secure for a few more days, apologies to the environment.

But this supply uncertainty had to end. So I decided to tap the power of the internet to fill this need. With a fresh cup of Texas Cinnamon in hand, I fired up my laptop and took my coffee search into the digital realm. To my joy I found my precious Texas Cinnamon coffee. I could have it shipped from the manufacturer – the Duncan Coffee Company of Bellville, TX – straight to my home…for $20 per bag. Say what? Twenty dollars for a bag of coffee?

I thought long and hard about it.

That’s when I started to wonder if I had a coffee addiction. How far was I willing to drive, how much was I willing to spend, to feed this coffee habit? To prove to myself I was no slave to any coffee, I said no to spending that amount of money on a pound. My life would not be driven by this pursuit of perfectly roasted cinnamon coffee. That settled, I bookmarked the ordering page on the coffee company website, and moved on.

I stopped in to a local grocery store not far from Newman’s Bakery and thought I had found it! As I entered the coffee aisle, I spotted the Bright and Early brand there on the shelf! I saw Texas Pecan and to other flavors, but no Texas Cinnamon. There was price sticker for it, but above the sticker sat  an empty shelf. I reached deep into the space hoping to find a bag tucked away in the shadowy recesses. I even moved some of the other flavors out of the way to see if a Texas Cinnamon was lurking behind. But, alas, no. I asked the store staff if they had any in the back, and they just shrugged. There was no Texas Cinnamon coffee to be had on this day.

And so I limped through another week rationing my Texas Cinnamon and making do with various other flavors from my Keurig collection. But on my next motorcycle ride up to Bellville, Newman’s had it! I briefly considered buying up every bag in the display case, but that sounded like something a coffee addict would do. So I settled on buying just two pounds – a month’s supply given my current consumption rate – and trusting that fate and the local supply chain would be there for me when this supply ran out.