For paid subscribers: A fascinating academic paper delves into the ways Korean Buddhists, after centuries of drinking tea, have started to embrace coffee.
Demand for coffee is growing, and climate change threatens supply—yet consumers don’t want to pay more. In an intensified and unequal industry, however, someone always pays.
Well-funded startups mimic the aesthetics and language of specialty coffee. Giant multinationals cosplay community. Companies chase trends created by social media. It all points towards coffee's growing hyperreality.
Onerous and erratic tariffs have upended the coffee trade, incentivising loopholes and workarounds. Collectively, these changes herald an uncertain new era for the global coffee industry.
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?
Smuggling has been a part of coffee since the beginning, and continues in many forms today. In the process, it reveals much about the industry’s power structures.
While Starbucks tries to return to its coffeehouse roots, a new wave of cafes spreading across the United States show how to really build a welcoming third place.
The United States has long been at the centre of the global coffee industry. But as policies shift under the Trump administration, that dominance is under threat.
Workers at Blue Bottle Coffee, acquired by Nestlé in 2017, have unionised. Now, they’re building international solidarity with the conglomerate’s union in Colombia.
Coffee is always in the news, from health studies to novel products to stunt job postings. But what do these “earned media” stories tell us about the motivations behind such coverage?
A complex web of pressures, from climate change to tariffs, are pushing up coffee prices. But the industry has a challenge: How to communicate necessary price rises to consumers without scaring them off.
Coffee is filled with buzzwords that lack agreed-upon definitions: slightly woolly terms like “Sustainable,” “Ethical,” even “Specialty.” Companies use them constantly to sell more coffee—but what do these words actually mean?
