Matt and I departed on Sunday for China — Beijing to be exact — to open an ABC’s affiliate school. China is a big country with a lot of diversity and one that is just now on the cutting-edge of specialty coffee.

I will post lots of pictures of the new China training center upon our return. I will also share photos of other landmarks like the Great Wall (5,000 kilometers long!) and The Forbidden City with its 9,999 rooms...and yes, lots of coffee shots, too.

We have a sold-out class at ABC's this week. Yesterday I spent most of the day lecturing on business with help from Matt and Kris, and the end-of-the-day roundtable discussion we held was very successful. We debuted our streamlined class structure this month, which now consists of one day of business training and four full days in the espresso lab. We feel this new 5-day class strikes a better balance between the business and barista sides of specialty coffee entrepreneurship.

I spoke with a close friend last week who told me he gets three to four calls a week from people starting up coffee training schools. Of course, they are all asking him for "free machines," but he says no to all of them. He laughed when he told me how funny (actually sad) it was that everyone thinks they can start a coffee school. Both of us know the effort and the knowledge it takes to put a great program together, not to mention how difficult it is to compete with a school like ABC’s that has (just for one example) ten different brands of espresso machines. At ABC’s, we are not in the business of selling our students anything, but we do want them to try the best syrups, blenders, machines and coffees in the industry and make a educated choice about what’s right for them.

Many of these faux schools that are popping up have gigantic hidden agendas. They want to sell their students the machine they represent, and that is only the beginning of what they hope to secure from them. It is not nearly as much about education as it is an attempt to gain someone's trust and then sell them the store. There are Web sites that show photos of some of these schools that, in reality, are not even their brick-and-mortar locations. In some cases, they show photos of a barista training at a trade show, conning the unknowing person surfing the web into thinking it is their facility. Of course this is frustrating to a company like ours that strives to give huge value and the best training available. But most of all, I am sad that people are being deceived by companies (that actually are distributors for other products) and have no idea what they are "really buying" from them!

The Internet is a wonderful tool — few of us could live easily without it — but it has also become a profitable instrument for the bottom feeders and posers who see only dollar signs and have no passion for our industry. Most of these folks could be selling plasma televisions — coffee just seems to be what they can make a buck at this year.

I feel that the retail market has finally bottomed out and is slowly on the upswing. I truly don’t believe consumer habits changed that much during the downturn in the economy, but some of the factors that have affected coffee sales, store openings and closings are:

1. Major chains like Starbucks stopped opening stores in what I thought were very mediocre locations. Many of these did not perform well and in the past two years a percentage needed to be closed.

2. Independents with little passion and poor business skills picked poor locations, prepared deplorable beverages and lacked good operational systems in their stores. These businesses were also destined to fail.

3. Many new entrepreneurs were unable to obtain loans to open their businesses.

4. Independents (and now Starbucks and other chains) are realizing the importance of a unique and quality driven operation, with great ambiance.

The good news is that rent factors are appealing, and there is room in many markets for exclusive, rare and unique operations. With Starbucks “15th Ave. Coffee” spin off in Seattle, even Big Green has come to this conclusion. Will they see success with these wolves in sheep’s clothing stores? It’s anyone’s guess. I was quoted in an interesting story that came out a few days ago in Business Week Magazine that details what is happening to the stocks of the major players in our industry, and where their CEOs see the market heading.

Click here to read

It is good to be in the Bellissimo office where it’s 72 degrees, instead of out in the insane 104-degree heat. Wow! After a week of cool weather in Alaska, it was quite a shock to return to the crushing heat wave the Northwest is experiencing.

I had always wondered what it would be like to fish in Alaska. The thrill of hooking a big one was something I had never experienced. The biggest fish I caught as a child was a stringer of six-inch blue gills, and even when I went trout fishing in Oregon, I think the biggest fish I ever caught was12-inches long. In Alaska, I hooked huge halibut after halibut, and caught salmon as fast as I could re-bait and get the line in the water. I will never forget the experience. I love boats, and the crew and people I was with were amazing. The skipper was right out of Moby Dick, and he knew the waters like they were his back yard.

Each night we docked in beautiful coves that were teaming with wildlife. When we filleted our fish, we would attract eagles that would perch only a few feet away, waiting for the treats we provided them. I saw bear, otters, porpoises, birds, and whale shows that would look at home on the Nature Channel. The whales we saw were often breaching, and at one point there was a mom and her calves swimming ten feet from our boat. The best part of the trip was sitting on the isolated docks in the middle of nowhere, with breathtaking beauty in every direction you looked.

This week we are doing competition training at ABC's, and next week we will host Sustainable Harvest and their crew in the school for a lecture, tour and lunch. This weekend we are expecting the Cafe Circuit to arrive in Portland, and I will try to work that in with a concert, wedding and BBQ. Then it’s time for Matt and I to get ready to go to China. All in all, a very busy summer.

Today I board a plane to Vancouver, British Columbia for a weeklong consulting job with a Canadian chain. Vancouver is in my top five favorite cities in the world, and is definitely the closest one to where I live.

My hotel is within a mile of Roberto Bresciani's home and that means there are already plans in place with the entire Nuova Simonelli gang... Roberto, Gianni, Remo and maybe even Danny, if he is not skiing. I will finally get my Fabri jar that Remo has been holding for me for the last four years... sweet.

This will be my last blog for a while because a few days after I return from Vancouver I head to Alaska, which I’m told is having the nicest summer it’s had in 32 years. A former student and client invited me to a private fishing adventure, and July 15 to August 15 will be the prime time to catch mega halibut and King salmon. I’m told our 40-foot craft will afford us scenery and adventure that, as he says, "99 percent of Alaskans never see." As for the camera, I had better be ready because there will be lots of moose, whales, big-horn sheep, bears (maybe even Sara Palin now that she is unemployed) to photograph.

All of us at Bellissimo are headed in different directions for the long 4th of July holiday. Soon I will be posting some pix of my sojourn on Facebook, and they should be interesting and different — and have nothing to do with coffee (well maybe cowboy coffee).

This summer will be an extremely busy for Bellissimo, and July, August and September will include some major travel for me. First on the flight docket is a week in Vancouver B.C. followed by a week of fishing in Alaska (halibut and salmon). Only days after I return, I leave for New York City and Connecticut on business. Then Matt and I will travel to China followed closely by a trip to Coffee Fest Seattle. After that, I’m off to Honduras for nine days and Morocco at the end of October (I just got word today). Later in the year, I will travel to the Bahia region of Brazil. More on each of these trips later. Whew!

We have many new projects at Bellissimo and I can’t tell you about most of them just yet, but stay tuned. In the next couple of months you will see more changes at Bellissimo (all very positive) than we have implemented in the last ten years. I am excited.

I wish everyone a wonderful 4th of July full of beautiful fireworks.