Coffee News Roundup

Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending May 6th

Fionn Pooler

May 7, 2022 — 13 min read

An espresso cups sits on a table beside a folded newspaper. Via Unsplash

It’s the weekend, and thus a chance to look back on the week in coffee, perhaps while also drinking a cup of coffee.

Let’s see what’s been happening.

Starbucks Hit With Sweeping Labor Complaint Including Over 200 Alleged Violations - via CNBC

There will be more Starbucks news further down in the unionization section (there’s always Starbucks news in the unionization section) but this story seemed worthy of prominence.

The regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, based in Buffalo, New York, issued a complaint against Starbucks over 29 unfair labor practice charges relating to the original union push in the city back in 2021. The complaint included over 200 violations of the National Labor Relations Act.

According to CNBC, the complaint “accuses Starbucks of interfering with, restraining and coercing employees seeking to unionize in various ways.” This includes allegations that the company “threatened and intimidated workers by closing down stores in the area, reduced workers’ compensation, enforced policies against union supporters in a discriminatory way, engaged in surveillance and fired workers, among other alleged violations.”

These charges cover months’ worth of charges brought by Workers United against Starbucks, which said in response that the company “does not agree that the claims have merit”, and that “we look forward to presenting our evidence when the allegations are adjudicated.”

Workers United’s statement is a bit less cautions: “Starbucks will be held accountable for the union-busting minefield they forced workers to walk through in fighting for their right to organize. This Complaint fully unmasks Starbucks’ facade as a ‘progressive company’ and exposes the truth of Howard Schultz’s anti-union war.”

Read the full story here.

Four-Year BREEDCAFS Project Shows Productivity Plus Quality in Resilient Arabica Hybrids - via Daily Coffee News

The results of a four year study into the future of coffee has shown that F1 arabica hybrids could be key to resilience and increased production as well as reduced pesticide use and better quality.

Coordinated by the French agricultural agency CIRAD and involving nearly 20 different project partners, the research looked at F1 hybrids—first-generation progeny of two “pure” varieties—and their use in agroforestry clusters. Agroforestry clusters are a CIRAD-developed concept combining local value chains, agroforestry, and coffee cultivation with the goal of increasing incomes and supply chain transparency.

“The results show that these new hybrids are 10% to 20% more productive than traditional varieties,” CIRAD‘s project summary announced. “Their degree of resistance to diseases makes it possible to reduce pesticide use by 15% to 20%, and the icing on the cake is that they taste better.”

Read the full story here.

Swiss Police Find Half a Ton of Cocaine at Nespresso Roastery - via Daily Coffee News

Police in Switzerland have discovered cocaine with a street value of over $50 million inside bags of green coffee at Nespresso’s roastery (er, “production center”) in Romont.

Police were “alerted to the presence of a suspicious white powder in raw material bags on Monday by staff at the Nespresso facility,” according to Daily Coffee News.

The cocaine was supposedly found in shipping containers that originated in Brazil, although who shipped them remains unknown, and was apparently 80% pure.

In case you were concerned, Nespresso put out a statement reassuring consumers that “the substance in question did not come into contact with any of our products or production equipment,” and that “all our products are safe to consume”.

Read the full story here.

Starbucks Is Launching Its Own NFT Collection - via Food & Wine

Howard Schultz, he of the multiple Starbucks leaderships and failed presidential campaigns, hinted last month that the ostensible coffee company wants to expand its reach beyond the physical realm and delve into the world of Web3 and NFTs.

Details, much like the long-term feasibility of non-fungible tokens themselves, were hazy at the time. But now Starbucks has fleshed out this future-proofed plan, in a blog post entitled “We’re creating the digital Third Place”:

We plan to create a series of branded NFT collections, the ownership of which initiates community membership, and allows for access to exclusive experiences and perks. The themes of these collections will be born of Starbucks artistic expressions, both heritage and newly created, as well as through world-class collaborations with other innovators and like-minded brands.

As Food & Wine notes, Starbucks is still vague on exactly which blockchain technologies it will utilize, and the whole thing is couched in convoluted corporate tech-speak, but this announcement feels more geared towards shareholders than the employee-focused platitudes of last month’s speech.

Read the full story here.

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

More Headlines

Finland’s Paulig Sells Russian Business Amid Political Turmoil

Brazil Robusta Coffee Harvest Picks Up, Crop Seen Positively

Café Holdings to Launch Green Coffee Blockchain Platform

Ghanaian Women Drive New Growth in Coffee Production

The Week in Coffee Unionizing

More news from the unionization front this week:

President Joe Biden invited union leaders, including a representative of Starbucks Workers United, to the White House last week for a meeting and photo-op. Starbucks was not happy. Executive AJ Jones II wrote a snippy letter asking for the White House to hold a separate meet-and-greet for the company, claiming that Starbucks has a “drastically more positive vision for our partners and our company than Workers United” and listing off all the benefits the company provides. As Huffington Post notes, “Starbucks already seems to have good access in Washington, having spent $480,000 on lobbying so far this year”.
Starbucks announced this week that it would be raising pay at and expanding training for its company-owned US locations, but not for recently-unionized or possibly-unionizing stores. Labor experts told the New York Times that the move could be illegal, while Workers United has already filed a formal charge with the NLRB accusing Starbucks of “coercing employees who were voting in a union election by suggesting that it would withhold new benefits if they unionized.”
More than 50 Starbucks stores have now voted to unionize across the United States, with hundreds more waiting to vote or having announced their intent.

Is Coffee Good For You?

Not one but three studies this week, showing that daily coffee consumption is associated with lower risk of heart disease and unsafe heart rhythms, as well as overall longevity. One of the three related studies also showed that drinking coffee was linked to improved outcomes for those already suffering from cardiovascular disease.

“Because coffee can quicken heart rate, some people worry that drinking it could trigger or worsen certain heart issues,” lead author Peter M. Kistler said in an announcement. “This is where general medical advice to stop drinking coffee may come from. But our data suggest that daily coffee intake shouldn’t be discouraged, but rather included as a part of a healthy diet for people with and without heart disease.”