Coffee News Roundup

Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending May 20th

Fionn Pooler

May 20, 2022 — 14 min read

A white coffee cup with latte art and spoon sits atop a newspaper. Via Pixabay.

It’s another week’s end, which means it’s time to check in on all the coffee goings-on from the past seven days.

Time to open our metaphorical newspaper and take a peek at the headlines.

Starbucks Will Cover Travel Expenses for Employees Seeking Abortions - via New York Times

In response to the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion regarding Roe v Wade, Starbucks has joined a number of other large companies in saying it will cover expenses for its 240,000 US-based employees should they need to travel to seek an abortion. The New York Times says that “the average distance to an abortion provider would increase by 97 miles, to 122 miles from 25 miles, if Roe is overturned.”

In a memo to employees, the company also said it will cover travel expenses for gender-affirming procedures, when such services are not available within 100 miles of the employee’s home, in response to anti-trans legislation being passed across the country.

“Whatever healthcare choice you believe is right for you and your family,” Sara Kelly, Starbuck’s acting vice president for partner resources, wrote in the memo, “you deserve access to those services and the benefits that Starbucks provides.”

Read the full story here.

Brazil's Conab Lowers 2022 Coffee Crop Estimate Due to Bad Weather - via Nasdaq

Last year’s bad weather in Brazil is still impacting coffee production, with the country’s food supply agency Conab lowering this year’s estimate by two million bags.

Citing the drought and frost double whammy of 2021, Conab has put this year’s yield at 53.43 million 60 kg bags, down from the 55.74 million that it predicted in January.

This still represents a 12% increase over last year, but it’s down over 15% from the record haul in 2020, the last “on year” in Brazil’s biennial harvest cycle.

This comes as coffee-producing southern states are hit by cold weather and some snow and ice, the results of the Yakecan subtropical storm that is being linked at least partly to climate change. Some coffee farmers woke up to find frost on their trees, but in general the outcome was better than expected.

Read the full story here.

Verité Launches Toolkit to Address Coffee’s Looming Labor Problems - via Daily Coffee News

The labor rights non-profit Verité has launched an open-source toolkit “that help businesses and other stakeholders detect, prevent, and address labor violations in the coffee sector.”

It’s all part of a four-year program called The Cooperation on Fair, Free, Equitable Employment (COFFEE) Project which is funded by the United States government to the tune of $2.2 million.

“We want to move the industry from reactive to proactive; that is the approach,” Verité Program Director Andrés Montenegro told Daily Coffee News. “Don’t wait until a labor issue emerges in your supply chain to react, to mitigate what is emerging. Instead, incorporate compliance and due diligence, and address these issues early on in your sourcing efforts.”

Read the full story here.

Saudi Arabia Fund Investing $320 Million in New Green Coffee Company - via Daily Coffee News

Not content with being one of the Middle East’s key consumers of coffee, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) will invest $320 million in the country’s nascent coffee sector in order to become “an international player in coffee exports.”

The goal is to eventually reach 2,500 tons of coffee exported each year, up from 300 currently, putting the country on par with Nigeria and Ghana in terms of production. Saudi Arabia’s coffee growing industry is still very small, located mostly in just three regions and comprising around 2,500 farms, according to the PIF.

The investment includes the launch of the Saudi Coffee Company to coordinate with the private sector to increase production, specifically in the southern Jazan region, as well as a coffee academy.

Although not a huge producer of coffee, Saudi Arabia is a growing consumer of the drink, with a 4% yearly increase from 2016 to 2021, and it even recently became the top importer of Ethiopian coffee.

Read the full story here.

Florence Coffee Bar Customer Calls Police Over Price of Espresso - via The Guardian

While we all know that Italians care deeply for their espresso—it was put forward for UNESCO heritage status not too long ago—would you call the police if you were charged €2 instead of the expected €1 for your morning shot?

That’s what happened to the famed Ditta Artigianale, with the company eventually being fined €1,000 for apparently not displaying the price on a menu behind the bar (the owner says that the price was viewable on a digital menu).

There was a big hullabaloo earlier this year when a majority of Italian espresso bars raised the price of their most popular drink due to supply chain issues and poor harvests. Ditta Artigianale has always steered away from the cheap espresso trend, charging €1.50 when it first opened in 2013.

“There was negative and positive reaction, but until now I had never been fined,” owner Francesco Sanapo said on Facebook. “Even today, someone can get so annoyed that they mobilise the police, who find us to be in the wrong due to an outdated law.”

Read the full story here.

A person sitting on a park bench reads a newspaper. via Wikimedia Commons

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The Week in Coffee Unionizing

Starbucks has fired more than 20 union leaders over the past few months, according to the Guardian. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued complaints against the company for many of these firings, demanding reinstatement and backpay. “I believe I was fired for being a shift supervisor who was pro-union,” Ashlee Feldman from St Louis, Missouri said. “I’ve been with Starbucks almost three years and have never had any issues.”
The NLRB also issued a complaint this week which seeks to order Starbucks to recognize a union at a store in Buffalo that held an unsuccessful vote last year, saying that the company “broke so many laws that it irreparably tainted the union election process”. The bargaining order is “nothing short of exceptional,” said Camp Road shift supervisor Gianna Reeve. “The partners at this location have been subjected to some of the most aggressive union-busting seen in recent years.”

The Week in Corporate Coffeewashing

Lots going on this week, so let’s do another bullet-point list.

JDE Peet’s “will increase its responsibly sourced coffee target from 30 per cent to 80 per cent by the end of 2022,” according to the company. Once again there’s no real clarification of what “responsibly sourced” means, and there’s also a claim of investing $158 million “into its responsible sourcing program to directly support more than one million smallholder coffee farmers by 2025.” Again, no more details. But hey, that’s more money than usual.
Nestlé will start tracking its Dolce Gusto coffee capsules “to enhance the traceability of returns to recycling points by consumers” who can then earn rewards and such. Consumers, as the article keeps calling them, can drop off a bag of used capsules, scan a QR code, and then “keep a personalized track of the number of capsules they deposit”. This tracking “connects and involves consumers with the waste management process while giving a second life to the coffee capsules”, according to the company.
Nespresso is doing a similar thing in Australia, albeit on a trial basis, offering incentives to encourage consumers (again) to drop off their pods for recycling. A bag of 100 used capsules gets you a free gift, such as a notebook (made with recycled coffee grounds, natch) or a beach towel. They’re having to bribe people to recycle now, apparently.
Oh and Nespresso is supplying coffee to make vegan shoes in Portugal, “a chic and stylish shoe that celebrates the value of coffee and the virtue of circularity.”