Leave Iced Coffee to the Professionals

Another week without any major Starbucks news? They’re slacking off. Here’s what else happened:

• The commodity price of coffee has been increasing all year, and over the past few weeks arabica futures spiked to their highest level since 1977. The reasons are many, from climate breakdown to tariff threats to uncertainty over the EU’s deforestation legislation. What it means for coffee farmers—and whether prices will stay high long term—remains to be seen.
• Nestlé and Keurig are both trying to capture the growing home cold coffee market, but it turns out that making cafe-quality iced coffee at home is harder than it looks.
• How do you encourage consumers to ditch disposable cups? It’s something I have written about before, but now a team of researchers in Vancouver decided to use the prospect of winning free coffee to tempt college kids to bring their reusable cups. That’s right: a little light gambling might solve the single-use cup crisis.

Read more on all these stories—plus, how scientists in Costa Rica are exploring sustainable low-elevation coffee production in a heating world—over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

I’ll be back on Friday with a new probably far-too-long piece exploring the connection between the commodity price spike and the climate crisis.

Until then, it’s goodbye from a special seasonal guest star, Clem from Michigan: