Chatbots telling us what we want. Robots making our coffee. Baristas reduced to smiling servers. If Starbucks and other brands get their way, this is the future: a frictionless, interactionless, lifeless coffee experience.
For paid subscribers: A fascinating academic paper delves into the ways Korean Buddhists, after centuries of drinking tea, have started to embrace coffee.
For paid subscribers: One of Howard Schultz’ final acts as Starbucks CEO was inflicting upon us a line of olive oil-infused coffee drinks. He was so confident the Oleato would change the world. It didn’t.
For paid subscribers: The coffee industry is embracing automation, and consumers increasingly demand convenience and speed. Me? I’m happy to wait for my coffee to be made by a human.
For paid subscribers: From the preposterous tech startup that wanted to roast coffee in space to espresso on the International Space Station, there’s a lot of coffee up there.
For paid subscribers: Since Elon Musk’s purchase, and especially in the wake of the Grok CSAM deepfake scandal, it has become impossible to defend staying on X. And yet, many coffee brands and organisations are still there.
For paid subscribers: Nestlé is exploring a sale of Blue Bottle, and Luckin is reportedly interested. With such different approaches to coffee, however, it’s worth asking the question: why?
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.
For paid subscribers: Blue Bottle used carbon offsets and a focus on “emissions intensity” to go carbon neutral, but its total emissions increased quite significantly. Should this "achievement" be celebrated?
