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.
Coffee companies are going all in on automation. We’re told that it improves efficiency, cuts costs, and yields a better product. But what does it mean for the baristas whose labour these automations displace?
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.
In the U.S., Starbucks workers continue to fight for a union contract after years of roadblocks and retaliation. The struggle seems endless—but organisers in Chile offer a vision of what can be achieved.
Baristas and other hourly coffee workers are undervalued and underpaid—but they are far from unskilled, despite what the pernicious stereotypes suggest.
The writer and podcast host on how the "crime" and "safety" justifications used by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz hide the real reasons for the closures.
