The best part of waking up hasn't been Folgers for a decade or more. With Starbucks making gourmet coffee ubiquitous and boutique coffee roasters brewing ever-more-delightful java, Folgers is stuck in grandpa's mug. My brother-in-law and I give each other grimaces behind my dad's back when we drink the home brew at his house, and I've been known to bring my own beans when I'm visiting.

But grandpa is getting on now, and consumers looking for ways to save cash turn to their daily coffee beverage so often that saving $4 a day has a name: The Starbucks Factor, or the Latte Factor, depending on your brand loyalty (or lack thereof). But Folgers, Maxwell House and the even lesser-known competitors make their coffee from the ultra-cheap and inferior "Robusta" beans, in contrast to the "Arabica" beans used by upscale coffees. Robusta beans thrive at lower altitudes and produce far more beans per plant, and have twice the caffeine of Arabica beans; but their flavor, according to coffee connoisseurs, is extremely inadequate. How could a discriminating coffee drinker be persuaded to switch to Folgers, without creating a price disadvantage?

Instead of investing in better beans, Folgers invested in technology and marketing.

According to NewScientist, if Americans want to save their economy, they should go on a diet. Not only that, but ecologists say that "the apparently looming energy crisis could be averted if US residents cut their calorie intake."

On the surface, this sounds like it could be contradicting plain economic reason. The U.S. must consume more, not less, to save the economy, right? But is that long-term thinking in the face of higher food and energy costs?

The scientists who tried to bring their point across, David Pimentel of Cornell University and colleagues, showed how a few relatively simple changes can save energy. A lot of it. Changes include improvements in farming to more efficient bulbs, reduced transportation distances, cutting on packaging and more.

Fine, you say, what's that got to do with my diet?

"It's the economy," John Kallas was telling a friend.

I was browsing a street fair here in Portland when I saw the booth of Kallas, a local wildcrafting expert. It was hard not for a sustainable food geek like me to get excited, what with the jars of wild edibles ranging from black walnuts to Indian potatoes to assorted parts of the cattail plant. He was talking to a friend in between my questions ("how do you dry walnuts?" "Is lamb's quarters a native plant?") about the state of his business. Evidently, it was good. In a typical year, with Kallas' income from Wild Food Adventures' nature walks, workshops and expeditions, he barely broke even (and it was a good thing much of his food was gathered wild). This year? He'd already exceeded last year's income. The bad economy is very good for him.

It's a great time to be in business if you're helping people eat more economically, to get "off the grid" a bit. Another local food "hacker," Monique Dupre, has her Sustainable Living on a Budget workshop series sold out weeks in advance and has raised her prices due to demand.

On the other side of the food and fuel equation, local family bike supplier Clever Cycles is closed for weeks. The reason? The year-old bicycle shop had sold so many of its Bakfiets cargo bikes, Xtracycle cargo kits, BoBike children's bike seats and other solutions for family biking that it didn't have anything to offer the customers clamoring to park their minivans and SUVs and switch to bike transportation.

Now I'm making a mental list of businesses booming in this economy (and I don't mean Exxon!). What companies in your local area are doing fabulous thanks to the downturn?