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.
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)
This year’s Best of Panama coffee auction was the most expensive ever, and was once again dominated by the gesha variety that put Panamanian coffee on the map. Now, the country’s coffee association is seeking to brand and trademark its most valuable asset.
For paid subscribers: Blue Bottle used carbon offsets and a focus on “emissions intensity” to go carbon neutral, but its total emissions increased quite significantly. Should this "achievement" be celebrated?
As the climate crisis intensifies, regenerative agriculture could play a key role in sustaining and strengthening the global coffee industry. That is, if it can escape becoming just another corporate sustainability buzzword.
Companies are turning to automation as a tool to fight back against industrial action. In coffee, that role could well be played by robot baristas—in fact, it sort of already has.
Coffee companies are going all in on automation. We’re told that it improves efficiency, cuts costs, and yields a better product. But what does it mean for the baristas whose labour these automations displace?
For paid subscribers: Today, Sweden is famous for its love of coffee. But historically that hasn’t always been the case, and one particular ruler’s attempts to prove coffee’s harmful health impacts may have been the world’s first randomised controlled trial.
