Coffee Features
The Coffee Barometer doesn’t pull any punches. So many coffee sustainability reports hedge their opinions and water down their criticisms, perhaps afraid to cross the corporations that fund much of the industry’s work to combat the climate crisis. The Barometer—a version of which has been published by
Coffee Features
Kenya is one of the world’s most renowned coffee-producing countries. Its coffees are sought-after by specialty roasters for their clarity, acidity, and complexity; but within Kenya, coffee consumption has remained a relative afterthought. Its colonial-dominated past means that tea is still Kenya’s drink of choice, and historically the
Coffee Features
Roy Street Coffee & Tea, one of the Stealth Starbucks that opened in Seattle in the 2000s. via Wikipedia In 2009 a Starbucks location in Seattle closed for renovations. When it reopened, much had changed: gone was the familiar mermaid logo, the baristas (er, partners) no longer wore their customary
Coffee Features
Coffee production is in crisis. Across the globe farmers struggle to make ends meet through growing coffee, and as the climate crisis intensifies it’s only going to get worse. An industry that generates hundreds of billions of dollars every year is built on the backs of smallholder farmers who
Coffee Features
Coffee produces a lot of waste. Whether byproducts from the green processing at origin or used grounds after brewing, there’s always organic matter left over. Some of this waste goes into mulch or fertilizer on the farm or into compost heaps around the world. But a lot more goes
Coffee Features
At the beginning of August I wrote about the turmoil in Kenya’s coffee sector as part of my weekly news roundup for Fresh Cup Magazine. In July the country’s central auction house, the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE), closed pending government reforms to the way coffee is traded. All
Coffee Features
Philly is a union town. The history of labor in the United States is entwined with the history of Philadelphia: the city was home to the country’s first labor union, as well as the first general strike. Now, Philly’s coffee workers are joining this labor tradition. Local 80
A blog and newsletter dedicated to exploring and analyzing the specialty coffee industry
All coffee shop owners worry about another cafe opening in their neighborhood. Will you lose customers to the new place? Will they serve better coffee, or if not will you have to lower prices? Nobody likes competition, and margins are already so slim in the coffee industry. What will another
We’re used to being able to grab a coffee at any time, from a cafe on every corner, made to our exact specifications in mere seconds. But this is a relatively new phenomenon. For hundreds of years coffee was hard to get hold of, expensive, and tasted terrible. That’
For Cara Nader, founder of Strange Matter Coffee, the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ protests isn’t an abstract issue on Twitter. Since 2014, Lansing, Michigan-based Strange Matter has built a reputation for offering a welcoming, inclusive environment—flying a progress pride flag, hosting events, and raising funds for local LGBTQ+ organizations.
Ah, June. One of the nicest things about early summer is being able to sit outside a coffee shop, enjoying the sun and sipping a cold brew or iced latte. But what’s this? Visibility is dropping and the air is getting thick? A sepia filter has descended over the
Do you know the environmental impact of your morning cup of coffee? Coffee is an agricultural product produced in stages around the world, and every stage of the process emits carbon and other pollutants. At the farm there’s machinery, maybe pesticides, maybe water use and associated waste. There’s
Finding Higher Grounds: an unpublished interview about a controversial coffee film The Pourover has always been built on interviews. I like reading (and listening to) smart people talk about things they’re interested in, and figured my readers would too. My first ever interview back in 2018 was a big
Victoria Magaña Ledesma never intended to run a coffee farm. Studying Business Administration and Sociology at the University of Hawaii, she planned to join the management training program at the local Four Seasons Hotel and enter a career in hospitality. “I was going to climb the American corporate ladder,” she
Last year, drought and heavy rain impacted coffee harvests around the world. The year before that, same thing. The climate crisis is coming for coffee, and the industry doesn’t seem to be moving swiftly enough. We’re told that coffee might not survive past 2050, which is when most
Coffee companies want you to buy their products, obviously. To do this, they need you to feel good about what you’re buying, and ideally to feel good about the company itself. Sure they could just stick their coffee on the grocery store shelf alongside all the other brands, but
Celebrity coffee brands are having a bit of a moment. Depending on your preference, you can buy coffee from A-list actors like Hugh Jackman and Tom Hanks, rock bands like Green Day and Korn, or rappers like Jadakiss and Snoop Dogg. Sadly, you can no longer buy your coffee from
We’ve all heard the jokes about decaf, we’ve all seen the “death before decaf” memes. It’s true that for many companies, decaffeinated coffee is an afterthought at best and an annoyance at worst. Maybe it’s roasted without care, or it’s not dialed in with the
The climate crisis is coming for coffee. It’s coming for everything else as well, of course, but coffee appears uniquely at risk due to its susceptibility to stress and disease. And that threat could be existential: multiple reports and articles in recent years have foretold “the end of coffee”