While I love a good cappuccino, I rarely drink plain coffee — why drink an addictive beverage that stains your teeth and keeps you up at night? I realize I am in the minority here, particularly among the traveling crowd, but perhaps it is for the better. After all, my primary airline is United and the post-merger coffee has not been branded “Fresh Poo” by accident. We’ve been hearing rumblings about new onboard coffee and an internal article to United employees entitled “Something’s brewing. It’s going to be better” shows us that we are one step closer.
As part of our continuing focus on what’s important to our employees and customers, we are reviewing our coffee served both on board and in our United Clubs.
What is the process? It began with 17 coffee brands; we narrowed the field to nine and invited the vendors to participate in evaluations. After the remaining brands were presented to us, we conducted blind taste tests recently with three finalists — two premium coffee blends from competing global brands and the current blend, which served as a baseline. We asked employees and customers to sample the coffees and share their thoughts with us — this took place in late October at our ORD Flight Ops and Inflight Services bases, on Nov. 3 at our Willis Tower location in Chicago, on Nov. 4 in Airport Operations at EWR and on Nov. 5 and 10 on board several of our flights. The taste tests included Boeing, Airbus and United Express aircraft…
This is encouraging news — testing it onboard is pivotal and the very testing process shows that United is finally addressing the little things that have bedeviled customers for the last few years.
While no coffee aficionado, I do know that water matters too and hope that United will consider using bottled water rather than the potable onboard water that sits in a tank of unreliable cleanliness.
United should also think about refreshing its onboard tea — not having green or Chinese-style tea on flights to/from Asia is culturally insensitive and the black tea currently offered is uninspiring. United stocks Numi tea in many of its airport lounges and it would be great to see a selection of tea bags onboard as well.
No date yet for the new coffee, but we are getting closer and I doubt it is even possible that the new blend could be worse than what we have now.
I’m also not a coffee drinker, unless in a desperate state of sleep deprivation, or flying Austrian Business Class. I am a tea drinker, although I rarely drink it on board due to the typically poor quality water that is used. I’ve found United still serves (usually Japanese) green tea on most Asian flights, which is nice. I realize we are in the minority, but I do wish there were better tea options as well. Decent tea on board is possible, but I’m not expecting much from United.
In any case, I hope the result of this trial is better, from what I’ve heard improving on “Fresh Poo” won’t take much.
Now if United could make a decent black tea. I can never tell if it is the water or the tea they use or the combination. While I have had good tea on other airlines, United just can’t seem to make a decent cuppa.
I used to fly allot , and the early morning smell of a fresh of a pot of Starbucks and the cold air in the plane was one of my favorite things. The current coffee is dark brown water , no flavor , or aroma , nothing. The Starbucks they used to have was so much better. I hope they try hard to fix the coffee and bring back the biscotti that went with it. It’s the small things that make a difference I hope they understand this.
Green tea and oolong tea served on Japan and China flights. Really looking forward to hearing who the next coffee brand won the taste test by testers.