Outsource Your Coffee Decision-Making to a Chatbot

• The National Coffee Association's latest Data Trends report is out, and as always the TL;DR is that coffee is popular and people drink a lot of it. In the U.S., it's the most popular beverage after tap water (but then, how do you compete with water?). This time, however, the report found that 85% of people who said they drank coffee in the past day made it at home. That's the highest it's been since 2012, and up 5% since 2020, possibly reflecting both the increasing interest in home brewing, and also rising coffee prices.
• Starbucks wants its customers to start using ChatGPT to decide what to order instead of figuring it out themselves or speaking to a barista. The company has launched a beta app inside of ChatGPT that lets users describe their mood or upload a photo and have the chatbot recommend a drink. “Even with the best-faith read, it’s hard to understand what problem this is meant to solve", as one reviewer put it.
  
  I will be writing about this in more depth in the future, but for the time being here are my general feelings about generative AI and coffee:

The Coffee Industry Will Regret Embracing Generative AI

Coffee professionals and brands are increasingly adopting generative AI. But should an industry that prides itself on authenticity and sustainability really be embracing such a destructive tool?

The PouroverFionn Pooler

• Here's one weird trick to boost your cafe's sustainability: switch the default milk option from dairy to oat. Dairy is a huge driver of emissions—one study found that it was responsible for three quarters of a latte's carbon footprint—so encouraging customers to choose alternative milks can make a big difference. Researchers found that offering oat milk as the default option can reduce a latte's carbon footprint by up to 34%.

For more on all these stories, plus how the (sort of) first ever Starbucks in Seattle is unionising, check out the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

Coffee News Club: Week of April 20

More people are brewing coffee at home. Why? Plus, switching from dairy milk to oat makes a big difference, and Starbucks wants ChatGPT to help you order coffee.

Fresh CupFionn Pooler

Last week, paid subscribers received a piece on how Buddhist monks in Korea are switching from tea to coffee as both a meditative aid and an outreach tool:

Buddhist Brews

For paid subscribers: A fascinating academic paper delves into the ways Korean Buddhists, after centuries of drinking tea, have started to embrace coffee.

The PouroverFionn Pooler

I'll be back on Friday with another new longread, but until then it's goodbye from my friend Angela's cat Clem, who wasn't too happy with her outfit (and got help from her brother Jun to get rid of it):