Do you really know which brand of coffee your taste buds prefer the most? Or are your choices driven mostly by the power of branding, marketing, and hype?

To answer these questions, Hawaiikiki has launched the Discover Your True Love campaign.

Method: A study to discover which brand – among Starbucks^®, Caribou^®, and Hawaii’s Infusion^® - is most preferred in a blind taste test.

Participants: Downtown Minneapolis coffee drinkers.

Procedure:

• Purchase 12-oz cups of brewed coffee from Starbucks^® and Caribou Coffee^®, and obtain Hawaii’s Infusion^® coffee using a similar procedure.
• Ensure that the brand identity of each coffee is completely concealed from test participants by transferring each cup of coffee into an identical thermal container, which is tagged by a number instead of a brand name.
• The validity of number tagging is verified by witnesses who provide their names and contact details to confirm the integrity of the process.
• Solicit volunteers from downtown Minneapolis to take the blind taste test.
• Each participant is instructed to sip the same amount of coffee in three sampling cups, each of which is tagged by a number, and report the most preferred coffee.
• Reveal the brand that corresponds to the number preferred by the participant, and ask the participant to record this brand, as well as his/her name and contact details to confirm authenticity of participation.
• Rotate the order in which the Starbucks^®, Caribou^®, and Hawaii’s Infusion^® coffees are sampled by participants, so that the overall sequence is randomized.

Study Period: April-September 2006.

Results: The lawyers for one of the contending coffees wanted the results not to be published.

Watch for upcoming news!