Chatbots telling us what we want. Robots making our coffee. Baristas reduced to smiling servers. If Starbucks and other brands get their way, this is the future: a frictionless, interactionless, lifeless coffee experience.
Another bumper edition of the Roundup this week. Here's some of what happened:
Several thousand bags of Massimo Zanetti coffee were mislabelled as decaf and sold across multiple Midwest states, leading to a voluntary recall due to the risk of what the FDA called "medically reversible adverse health consequences".
Botanists are looking into the potential of stenophylla, a wild coffee species indigenous to West Africa, as a possible alternative to arabica and robusta as the planet heats. Stenophylla is considered more resilient, and new research shows that it is also chemically quite similar to arabica in terms of taste.
Gen Z, I'm told, are the nostalgic generation: they embrace vintage clothing, music, and even analogue tech like the humble VHS. They're also into retro coffee, it seems, increasingly embracing their grandparents' favourites: instant coffee and flavoured creamers. The vast majority of Gen Z add creamer to their coffee, apparently, and they're also behind the recent rise in popularity of instant.
Read more on all these stories—plus some health news regarding those super-automatic office coffee machines—over at Fresh Cup Magazine:
If you missed it, you can read my latest article which looks at the implications of the U.S. government's border crackdown and anti-trans mania in Texas on the upcoming SCA Expo trade show in Houston:
I'll be back on Friday with a new Coffee Conversations interview, but until then it's goodbye from Moon, my editor Claire's cat, who would like a word:
I'm a coffee writer and creator of The Pourover. Based in Scotland, I have over a decade of experience in the specialty coffee industry. Ask me about coffeewashing. It's pronounced Fin (he/him)
Fionn Pooler
Fionn Pooler
