McDonald's and Vancouver 2010

Something has been bugging me for a while, as I watch commercials leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics.  Over and over again we hear that the official restaurant of the 2010 Winter Olympics is none other than good ol' McDonald's.  And my response from the very get go was "SERIOUSLY"!  Isn't McDonald's and Olympics an oxymoron?  Do any serious athletes hoping to stand on the podium this February in Vancouver, ever step foot in a McDonald's restaurant, other than perhaps to film a commercial?  I know that the games are crazy expensive, which is another discussion all in itself for another time, but seriously, couldn't the blatant pandering for cash be somewhat thoughtful.  Couldn't the Olympic Committee have at least chosen Subway as the official restaurant, at least Jared has shown that you can lose weight and still eat at Subway.

That being said, and finally off my chest, another less auspicious group of competitions suffer from the same lack of judgement and integrity.  Yes, I am speaking about Barista Competitions, and all of them.  Regional's, Nationals, Worlds, all of the barista competitions take on sponsors who gladly fork over some cash, to have their logo splashed about.  The problem with some of these sponsors is that they have nothing to do with being a barista, or even anything remotely associated with serious specialty coffee.  Why do we all seem to have syrup sponsors at a barista competition?  I have never watched a competition where someone grabbed the bottle of hazelnut syrup to add to their signature drink.  Why do some of our competitions allow the sponsors to be equipment companies that have nothing to do with quality, let alone the standards associated with the specialty coffee industry?  These are questions I continually ask, and are questions that no one in places of authority ever seem to want to address.  Why not associate ourselves with other products of significant quality, rather than pander and in so doing, mislead the few public who tune into our competitions.  OK, enough of the rants, albeit serious questions that bounce around in my head from time to time.

On the issue of quality, I will write in the near future about Transcend's standards, and what we expect in terms of quality so that my previous post has somewhere to rest, as recent comments have shown that I am guilty of being too vague at times.