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Starbucks Tough Times

Cylon invasion?

Series cancellation?

Well, I guess it’s not quite the same as humanity being decimated by a nuclear assault by the mechanical armies of its own creation, but it’s news nonetheless as a bad economy brings a tough summer for that other Starbuck.
The Associated Press reports that Starbucks plans to close some 600 stores in the […]

More Bay Area News

Following up on Gabe’s great report on home cupping with Andrew, Chris and Drew, some of our favorite Bay Area coffee companies are getting rave reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle. Ritual, Weavers, Blue Bottle, Four Barrel, and Barefoot all get their props, in two separate stories (“Roast with the Most” and “Coffee Lovers Spill […]

Nordic Cup Finland 2008 canceled… but Iceland 2009 will be great!

We’re sad to share the news that the 2008 Nordic Barista Cup (NBC), scheduled to be held in Helsinki, Finland, in September, has been canceled. Barista Magazine and the Nordic Barista Cup have always shared a special relationship, as I debuted the idea for the magazine at the 2004 NBC in Iceland, and was given […]

Do You Want the Rad News or the Ridiculous?

Let’s start with the rad. Our friends at Olympia Coffee Roasting Company—pssst! they’re the same guys as Espresso Parts!—just sent us the most bitchen photos of their new delivery system:

Here’s what they have to say about the bikes:
“Olympia Coffee Roasting Company is pleased to announce the arrival of our newest delivery vehicle. Olympia Coffee Roasting […]

And in other news…

Alright, so apparently there’s some coffee company called Starbucks, and they’ve had a lot going on lately. Fine. But guess what? Coffee’s a big world, and some of our favorite coffee folks have had a few great things going on of their own.

First up, Alterra Coffee Roasters in Milwaukee, Wis. got some love recently with […]

Breaking News: Starbucks buys Clover!

    
Not just a machine, but the company. News release here.
Starbucks had recently put Clovers in stores in Boston and Seattle. And Howard Schultz said, rightly I think, that “the Clover machine unequivocally delivers the best cup of brewed coffee I have ever tasted.”
Starbucks also announced a number of other moves today to revitalize the […]

Cloverfield-day!

The online magazine, Slate, has a great story up about everyone’s favorite VacuumPress coffee brewer: the Clover! You can read it here.
The author begins by requesting a machine for home use, but then comes to his senses and ends up meeting David Latourelle at Café Grumpy in New York to experiment with the machine there. […]

Tragedy Strikes, You Can Help

Our good friends at Finca Vista Hermosa in Guatemala suffered a cruel shock recently. As the farm’s manager, Carlos, and his son, Edwin, returned to the finca with the workers’ payroll, they were attacked, robbed and killed by bandits.
Carlos was a father to 12 kids, and Edwin was the first child in the family to […]

Baristas for Bikes

By now most of you are familiar with the nonprofit, Bikes to Rwanda, based here in Portland, Ore., which has successfully delivered hundreds of custom-built bikes to coffee farmers in the highlands of Rwanda, where they are used to get cherries to the mill faster and easier than the old way: on foot.

It was no […]

Report from Africa

Today I received an email from our friend Shane Devereaux, owner of habit coffee + culture in Victoria, B.C., about how his extended trip to Africa for various coffee trainings is going, and thought I’d share it with all of you…

“At the moment I’m in between two semi final matches of the African World Cup. […]