Coffee Features
India’s coffee scene is booming. Domestic coffee consumption has grown rapidly in recent years—upwards of 30% since 2018—and that momentum shows no signs of slowing. The sector’s meteoric rise mirrors the country’s overall economic picture; currently, India has the fastest-growing major economy in the world.
Coffee Features
Big money pours into specialty coffee with one goal: wealth extraction. But as soon as things go wrong, workers are the first to suffer.
Coffee Features
It’s all Jack Nicholson’s fault. In 2007 he starred with Morgan Freeman in ‘The Bucket List’, a surprise box office hit about two men with terminal cancer who decide to embark on a globetrotting adventure before they kick the bucket. (Fun fact: This movie coined the now-common “bucket
Coffee Features
George Clooney crouches on a sunlight-drenched hillside in Puerto Rico, smiling as he helps a farmer plant coffee seedlings between banana shade trees. “When you hear Nespresso talk about sustainability, it’s about people as well as it is about the coffee bean and the plant”, Clooney says in a
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
Coffee Features
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
Coffee Features
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’
Coffee Features
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.
Coffee Features
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
Coffee Features
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