In the second part of our conversation with George Howell, you’ll hear the story of how he influenced the global coffee market, increased quality standards and improved the lives of thousands of people.
George Howell is a passionate coffee connoisseur. His career in coffee began in the 1970’s, when he opened an art café in Harvard Square. Combining his deep love for roasting with his dedication to Mexican indigenous artists, George’s cafés gained a devoted following.
Now, George Howell Coffee shops are expanding across the East coast in the Boston area. As the Founder, George spends his time educating and traveling with his daughter Jenny in pursuit of the finest coffee beans in the world.
George Howell was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Specialty Coffee Association of America in 1996, for having raised specialty coffee quality standards to a new level through his Massachusetts-based company The Coffee Connection (1974 – 1994). He had grown The Coffee Connection into 24 company-owned stores in the Northeast and sold his high-quality popular coffee company to Starbucks in 1994.
In 1997, George worked on models of economic sustainability for coffee farmers under the United Nations and the International Coffee Organization. This led directly to the founding of the precedent-setting Cup Of Excellence program in 1999; it established the world’s first international estate coffee competition and international internet auction that mightily contributed to breaking the commodity/price cycle for craftsman farmers in the specialty coffee industry.
George Howell is a pioneer of the fair trade system. Working in partnership with quality producers, George’s company pays top prices for green coffees, far exceeding Fair Trade pricing.
Giving the people what they want
George Howell wishes we would all drink black coffee. But back in the 1980’s, he realized that crowd pleasing drinks were a hit…and decided to help create one.
In this episode, George tells the real story behind the frappuccino: He didn’t invent it. After visiting Seattle with a friend, he tried a version of the frappuccino and sought out to create a version of it for The Coffee Connection. He tasked his Manager and Marketer Andrew Frank with perfecting the formula, and Andrew did so much more than that – he coined the name frappuccino. It took off.
The idea exploded, turning their slow summers into record-breaking profit months. Customers loved the frozen caffeine drink and told their friends all about it. New versions of it popped up around the United States. Not only was America hooked on coffee – we were getting experimental with it.
The quest for quality and the start of a competition
Above all else, George considers himself an educator. After The Coffee Connection was acquired by Starbucks in 1994, he traveled Brazil with The International Coffee Relations Group to connect with coffee farmers.
He noticed that Brazil was not yet keeping up with Kenya, which was selling their beans at auction for double the usual fee. On a mission to help Brazilian farmers, he started test farms. They started simple, adding a new improvement each year. They designed tests to help prove that production improvements increase quality and profit.
Their tests were working when the program was suddenly halted. On a mission to prevent their research from being wasted, George brainstormed a solution.
He created the Cup Of Excellence program, encouraging a quality competition amongst coffee producers. He promised the winners ten cents above the current market value, and he suddenly had three hundred participants. The Brazilian market took off.
Enjoy this fascinating second half of our conversation with George Howell. If you love coffee, you’ll appreciate it even more knowing that every cup you drink was impacted by George himself.
Quotes

“What has sustained me is a need to educate.”
“Our invention of the frappuccino was the name. It took off! It made our summers go from being the least income-producing to being equal to any other quarter…literally overnight.”
“It was in 1988 when I went to Kenya and Costa Rica. I discovered how extraordinary, and how difficult it was to make great quality coffee.”
“I was invited to be part of the International Coffee Relations Group, at the International Coffee Association. We met four times a year, talking about issues, relationships and quality. We talked about what could be done to promote those issues.”
“I would travel and lecture – I would talk about the fast growth of specialty coffee, visiting one farm after the other. We created model farms where we had various farm owners where they would start from scratch. Each year they would add a quality improvement. We would see, was it more profitable at each level? We wanted to make the point that it was more profitable with each improvement we made.”
“We communicated to farmers that if they won the competition, they would get a minimum of ten cents over the current market value. By promising that, we got three hundred farmers to participate.”
“I had learned in ‘88 and ‘89 that Kenya was selling all their coffee at auction! And they were selling at about double everything else on the market. They went through a lot to get that quality.”
Links mentioned in this episode:

Podcast Resources
Visit the website for George Howell Coffee at https://georgehowellcoffee.com/
Follow George Howell Coffee on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ghowellcoffee/?hl=en and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GHowellCoffee/

Connect with The Business of You
Visit the Business of You on the web
Like The brandiD on Facebook
Follow The brandiD on LinkedIn
Join us on Instagram
Learn more about Branding on The brandiD Blog
Leave a Reply