Second only to the United States, France consumes about two million bags of coffee annually. The varieties include coffee from the East Indies; Mocha; Haitian (a great favorite); Central American; Colombian; and Brazils.
| An A.B.C. Shop, London | Halt of Caravaners at a Serai, Bulgaria |
Although there are many wholesale and retail coffee roasters in France, home roasting persists, particularly in the country districts. The little sheet-iron cylinder roasters, that are hand-turned over an iron box holding the charcoal fire, find a ready sale even in the modern department stores of the big cities. In any village or city in France it is a common sight on a pleasant day to find the householder turning his roaster on the curb in front of his home. Emmet G. Beeson, in The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal gives us this vignette of rural coffee roasting in the south of France:
In a certain town in the south of France I saw an old man with an outfit a little larger than the home variety, a machine with a capacity of about ten pounds. Instead of a cylinder in which to roast his coffee, he had perched on a sheet-iron frame a hollow round ball made of sheet iron. In the top of this ball there was a little slide which was opened by the means of a metal tool. In the sheet-iron frame he had kindled his charcoal fire. Directly in front of his roaster was a home-made cooling pan, the sides of which were of wood, the bottom covered with a fine grade of wire screening.
On this particular afternoon, the old man had taken up his place on the curb; and a big black cat had taken advantage of the warmth offered by the charcoal fire and was curled up, sleeping peacefully in the pan nearest the fire. The old man paid no attention to the cat, but went on rotating his ball of coffee and puffing away pensively on his cigarette. When his coffee had become blackened and burned, and blackened and burned it was, he stopped rotating the ball, opened the slide in the top, turned it over, and the hot, burned coffee rolled out, and much to his delight, on the sleeping cat, which leaped out of the pan and scampered up the street and into a hole under an old building.
I afterward learned that this old fellow made a business of going about the town gathering up coffee from the houses along the way and roasting it at a few sous per kilo, much the same fashion as a scissors grinder plies his trade in an American town.
Café de la Paix, Where Paris Drinks Its Coffee Outdoors
Quite a few grocers roast their own coffee in crude devices much like those described above; but the large coffee roasters are gradually eliminating this sort of procedure. There are at Havre several roasters, but only two of importance; one does a business of about two hundred and fifty bags a day, and the next largest has a capacity of about one hundred and sixty bags a day. In Paris, there are many coffee roasters, some quite large, comparatively speaking, one having a capacity of about seven hundred and fifty bags a day. Shop-keepers in Paris and other large cities roast their coffee fresh daily. The machines used are of the ball or cylinder type, employing gas fuel and turned by electric power. Invariably they stand where they may be seen from the street.