For paid subscribers: retail coffee prices have soared in recent years, driven by climbing commodity costs and tariff stupidity. Some of those pressures have now started to ease, and yet retail prices continue to rise. Will they ever come down?
The internet is full of warnings about the dangers lurking within coffee, whether it’s mould, mycotoxins, or other contaminants. The truth, however, is far more prosaic.
Many people visit cafes during the workday—but for those who work nights, good coffee remains woefully scarce. Now, one enterprising Australian is trying to change that.
Denver’s Amethyst Coffee closed in 2022, two years after raising prices to better compensate staff. But that doesn’t mean the project was a failure—in fact, it still offers lessons for the industry today.
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.
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.
Companies in the Global North capture most of the profits generated along the coffee supply chain. But farmer-owned coffee roasters offer a more equitable model—and a path forward for the industry.
Baristas and other hourly coffee workers are undervalued and underpaid—but they are far from unskilled, despite what the pernicious stereotypes suggest.
Starbucks wants to be known as a community gathering space, even after morphing into the ultimate convenience-focused coffee chain. But was it ever truly a third place in the first place?
