Experience suggests most Americans, those who have never seen the sea or have a passport, judge coffee quality by volume.
Also they believe that it must be totally transparent.
That is, you have to be able to see the bottom of the cup.
The hotel we stayed at in Italy had amazing coffee at breakfast
You got it out of a machine
It was a decent black colour and had a proper brown frothy layer on the top
but tasted exactly like hot water
I have no clue how they managed to have enough "something" in it to change the colour and create the top layer
and have exactly zero change in taste over just water
quite impressive actually
if you paid for a coffee during the day then the stuff you got was great
but breakfast was - not