For paid subscribers: Coffee is increasingly used to burnish the United Arab Emirates’ international image. Now it is being supercharged by merging with the popularity of the Dubai chocolate trend.
The coffee scene in Dubai is thriving, and the city is set to welcome the Specialty Coffee Association’s World of Coffee event next month. But underneath the glitzy facade and marketing buzz lies a moral quagmire.
Coffee roasters are expensive and slightly intimidating, but they are also fundamentally simple machines. As startup costs increase, no wonder people are building their own.
Despite evolving tastes and increased competition, India’s oldest and largest coffee chain—a communist-founded, worker-owned cooperative—is still going after 70 years.
For many, elite coffee competitions represent the pinnacle of the industry. But the huge costs to compete prevent those without financial support from participating—and harm the industry as a whole.
Although it produces some of the world's best coffee, domestic consumption in Kenya remains low. A new generation of coffee professionals wants to change that.
Unbranded Starbucks stores divided opinion back in the 2000s, and there are echoes in modern corporate-backed specialty companies like Intelligentsia and Blue Bottle.
