Coffee News Roundup

Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending May 27th

Fionn Pooler

May 28, 2022 — 12 min read

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Coffee News Roundup.

Let’s dive straight in.

Starbucks Will Exit Russia After 15 years, Closing 130 Licensed Cafes - via CNBC

After suspending operations within Russia in March following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, which included stopping shipments and temporarily closing its cafes, Starbucks will now completely remove itself from the market.

The move will result in 130 cafes closing, all licensed locations which Starbucks doesn’t operate itself, and the loss of nearly 2,000 jobs. The company says it will pay staff for six months, and assist with helping “to transition to new opportunities outside of Starbucks.”

Daily Coffee News’ article on the story also relates the trials and tribulations of Starbucks’ copyright issues within Russia, which is worth a read.

Read the full CNBC story here.

Uganda MPs Terminate Thorny Vinci Coffee Deal but Could it Resurface? via The East African

Somewhat predictably, the deal that the Uganda government made with a private company to monopolise the country’s coffee exports, has been cancelled by parliament.

The parliament’s committee on trade recommended that the memorandum of understanding be cancelled because “it is unconstitutional, illegal and not enforceable in law.”

The agreement between Uganda Vinci Coffee Company Ltd and the Ugandan government gave the company “exclusive rights to buy the country’s coffee” and “the rights to determine the price of the commodity”, according to Bloomberg, while also exempting it from all taxes. Amazingly, not everyone was happy with such an arrangement.

In return for all this, Vinci Coffee was going to build an $80 million coffee plant in Uganda. However, the committee report found that the company “had neither the financial capacity nor experience in the coffee value chain to build a coffee plant”.

Unfortunately, as the parliament’s resolutions are only advisory, there is concern that the deal could be renewed in a different form.

Read the full story here.

Luckin, the Scandal-Tainted Chinese Coffee Upstart, Plots an Improbable Comeback From Delisting and Bankruptcy - via Fortune

The headline says it all, really. Luckin Coffee was once considered a potential rival to Starbucks in China as it expanded at lightning pace between 2017 and 2020, then got busted for fraud and delisted from Nasdaq.

But now it’s back and eyeing a return to Nasdaq, having recently overtaken Starbucks in China by store count and with revenues increasing by 80%—although it’s worth noting that it’s never actually made a profit.

The Fortune article is long but worth a read if you want to get a sense of the rise and fall, and possible rise again, of Luckin. It’s interesting that the company has shifted away from trying to overtly compete with Starbucks, and is aiming to be a more accessible alternative.

Read the full story here.

More Headlines

ACE and Qima Coffee Reprise Best of Yemen Auction for 2022

Coffee To Eat: Legendary Japanese Barista Launches Edible Espresso

Organics Lead the Way to Inaugural ‘Super Mujeres’ Nicaragua Auction

The Cxffeeblack To Africa World Tour Is Kicking Off In Nashville

The Week in Coffee Unionizing

It’s been another week of voting, and winning, for Starbucks Workers United, with the 100th unionized store coming on Friday in Seattle. The win rate stands at 90%, with 2,000 workers now unionized across the United States. However, as this article points out, winning a vote and sitting down to bargain for a contract can be years apart.

Meanwhile, in Detroit: remember how workers at the midtown location of Great Lakes Coffee announced their intent to unionize and then went on strike a few months ago? Well, the shop has now permanently closed, with the owners blaming the pandemic for a lack of income, staff, and customers. Sure. "It’s upsetting knowing they would rather close the building itself than to talk to us about our union," one worker told the Detroit Free Press.

Is Coffee Good For You?

It’s not exactly “good”, but this week researchers have pinpointed what they think is the compound responsible for inducing a change in how things smell to people with COVID-19—and they found it in coffee.

Parosmia, where people experience disturbances in their sense of smell, is one of the many side effects of a COVID infection. It can make previously delicious things like coffee or chocolate smell like sewage or burning rubbish. Scientists have tried to find a “trigger molecule” that might explain these changes, and it looks like 2-furanmethanethiol might be to blame.

The molecule, found in coffee, was identified by 20 out of 29 volunteers as one causing a disgusting smell. “This is solid evidence that it’s not ‘all in the head’, and that the sense of disgust can be related to the compounds in the distorted foods,” said Dr Jane Parker, director of the Flavour Centre at the University of Reading and co-author of the research.