Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending December 15th

Welcome to the last Coffee News Roundup of 2023! After a festive break, I’ll be back with the much-anticipated (I assume) Coffee News Year in Review on January 1st.

But before that, here’s what’s been going on over the past week:

• China now has more branded coffee shops than the United States, thanks mostly to brands like Luckin and Cotti Coffee furiously opening new locations across the country. While Starbucks is still the biggest in Asia, that could soon change as Luckin et al begin to expand to Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea (although do they really need more coffee shops?)
• Speaking of Starbucks, the coffee giant says it wants to resume contract talks with its union in the new year. Whether it’s legit, or just another stalling tactic, remains to be seen. (Fun fact: this news dropped just in time to slightly derail my latest Pourover piece).
• Finnish scientists have published exactly how to make so-called beanless coffee, in an attempt to open up the field to new companies and innovations.

Related reading:

Why is Beanless Coffee?

If coffee is under threat from climate change (and it clearly is), what is the solution? How do we confront an unpredictably shifting and warming climate, while mitigating its causes and protecting the people most vulnerable to its effects? That’s a hard question. Much easier to answer a different question, to just remove the coffee entirely.…

The PouroverFionn Pooler

• Workers at ReAnimator Coffee in Philadelphia have tentatively agreed a union contract, the second Philadelphia barista union to win a contract after authorizing a strike in as many weeks.

Read the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

Thanks for reading the Pourover in 2023! I’ll be back on Friday with that aforementioned slightly redirected article on Starbucks, but until then it’s goodbye from Merlin: