Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Today’s Toronto Star featured an article on the growth of Toronto area independent coffee shops (many of which call themselves “espresso bars”, per the article): TheStar.com – living – Toronto’s love affair with espresso bars heats up. Toronto now has a mixture of established independent espresso bars and a growing array of newer ones. (A [...]

Today Voice of America News broadcast an executive summary of sorts on specialty coffee consumption in America: VOA News – Good to the Last Drop: Coffee Culture Is Alive and Well in the US. Like many things VOA, it’s spoken in slow and clearly annunciated English. Think the clinical drone of NPR presented at the [...]

The business world is fraught with a number of ironies. One of the bigger ironies is that all good businesses must do ridiculous things that detract from the very core things that made them good in the first place. Big, public businesses do this in an effort to sustain the growth figures demanded by Wall [...]

Many congratulations are in order for Heather Perry of Coffee Klatch in San Dimas, CA: Specialty Coffee Association of America Names 2007 United States Barista Champion. Heather entered the 2007 U.S. Barista Championship as a reigning three-peat winner of the Western Regional Barista Competition (or WRBC). Yesterday at the 2007 SCAA conference, Heather beat out [...]

No, I’m not slated as the latest guest movie reviewer for TV’s Ebert & Roeper. (Though I would love to be backstage to witness Robert Roeper tell his guests, “My show. Got that? It’s my show now!”) But last night, KQED aired a coffee-crisis-themed documentary for PBS’s “Indepedent Lens,” titled Black Gold: Independent Lens . [...]

Congratulations again to Heather Perry of Coffee Klatch in San Dimas, CA. Over the weekend, she successfully defended her 2006 title at the 2007 WRBC: Western Regional Barista Competition March 16-18, 2007. Also placing were Kyle Glanville of Intelligentsia in Los Angeles (yes, you read that city correctly) and Chris Baca of SF’s own Ritual [...]

At last month’s 2007 Great Lakes regional barista competition, reigning U.S. Barista Champion, Matthew Riddle of Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Chicago, defended his title for the right to compete at May’s U.S. Barista Championship: No regular Joes | Chicago Tribune. Tweet

Some of you may recall just how much the zombie children of the Fair Trade cult scare the bejeezus outta me. Ritual Coffee Roasters barista, Gabriel Boscana, wrote a much more tactful and civil approach to these single-issue customers in this month’s issue of Barista Magazine: FebMarch 07 – Certified Coffee Pusher. It was oddly [...]

Today the Chicagoist blog published an interview with Intelligentsia founder and CEO, Doug Zell: Chicagoist: Chicagoist Grills: Intelligentsia Coffee & Roasting Works CEO Doug Zell. Intelligentsia not only boasts some of the best roasted coffee in the country, and the reigning U.S. barista champion from one of their cafés, but they also helped set a [...]

Speaking of Nick Cho recently… Last Fall, Nick won the Southeast Regional Barista Competition (the press always wants to say “Championship”, but it’s “Competition” at the regionals). Congratulations, Nick. (No, seriously!) This means that Nick is headed down to Long Beach, CA to compete for the national title at the SCAA’s 19th Annual Conference & [...]