Tag Archive 'barista_training'

Andrea Illy on Fair Trade, barista training, and coffee pricing

Posted by on 22 Sep 2011 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Fair Trade, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee

Media profiles of Illycaffè‘s Andrea Illy are commonplace. But this one from today’s The Guardian (UK) is better than most: Andrea Illy: family businessman who’s raising the bar for premium coffee | Business | The Guardian. For one, Mr. Illy talks about the importance of pricing and brand positioning. Regardless of what you think of [...]

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Trip Report: Origin Coffee Roasting (Cape Town, South Africa)

Posted by on 12 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Barista, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues, Roasting

Among coffee aficionados in town, quality artisan coffee originates with Origin. Opening in 2006 in a more modest space, this place changed the face of coffee in Cape Town if not South Africa. Since its expansion, it is now three transparent levels of coffee, café, roasting, regional Synesso distributor, and barista training labs. If that [...]

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All You Need to Know About Steaming Milk (?)

Posted by on 18 Jun 2010 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Barista, Quality Issues

Coffee talk in the mainstream press these days looks a bit like the telenovela: short-lived serials from specific writers with an individual point of view. One of said serials comes from Giorgio Milos of illycaffè in The Atlantic, and his installment today is on milk frothing: All You Need to Know About Steaming Milk – [...]

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Intelligentsia Wins National Title, then Throws it Back

Posted by on 19 Apr 2010 | Tagged as: Barista

Is there anything the The Huffington Post won’t publish these days? Fortunately, this includes one of the better summaries of the US Barista Championship, completed yesterday: Todd Burbo: Intelligentsia Wins National Title, then Throws it Back. Congratulations are in order for Mike Phillips of Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Chicago, now the winner for two [...]

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Bay Area restaurants still struggle with “the coffee thing”

Posted by on 27 May 2009 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Machine, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee, Roasting

We are not the only ones who have lamented the sorry state of restaurant coffee — particularly at some of the Bay Area’s finest restaurants. The San Francisco Chronicle made poor restaurant coffee a front-page headline as early as 1963. In some ways, the elevated coffee standards that exist outside of the restaurant world are [...]

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Starbucks: Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons

Posted by on 16 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Quality Issues, Starbucks

One way to learn how important coffee is to some people is to sit in a jury room under bailiff lock & key without coffee for 7 1/2 hours. This pretty much describes my current existence at the aforementioned SF Glamour Slammer. I’m tempted to sneak in my own personal French press — if not [...]

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Home espresso education: Short, strong grounding in espresso

Posted by on 21 May 2008 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues, Starbucks

Yesterday’s The Age (Melbourne, Australia) published an article on the growing business of home espresso education: Short, strong grounding in espresso – Epicure – Entertainment – theage.com.au. The author noted how cafés, roasters, and other retail locations are creating “coffee classrooms” for instructing consumers on how to “create the perfect coffee at home”. The reason [...]

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The Art of the Italian Espresso | PRI’s The World

Posted by on 28 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, CoffeeRatings.com, Foreign Brew, Starbucks

Yesterday Public Radio International’s (PRI) The World aired a broadcast on the Italian espresso: Espresso | PRI’s The World. While every news outlet in America was regurgitating Starbucks‘ publicity over their token three-hour store closure for employee training, reporter David Leveille took a different approach by interviewing the art of the espresso from a distinctly [...]

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Italian Scientists Unveil Coffee-Making Robot

Posted by on 21 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Local Brew, Starbucks

This just in from Italy: Putting EU Money to Good Use: Italian Scientists Unveil Coffee-Making Robot – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News. “A coffee-making robot?,” you ask? More than the specialized Swiss jobs we’ve talked about, we’re actually talking 1940′s Popular Mechanics/The Jetsons‘ Rosie … that kind of robot. The kind we’ve been promised [...]

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Coffee Klatch Roasting Celebrates Starbucks Store Closures With Free Coffee for Everyone

Posted by on 19 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Quality Issues, Starbucks

It’s a rather snarky press release, but we confess to being amused by it: Coffee Klatch Roasting Celebrates Starbucks Store Closures With Free Coffee for Everyone. These days, Howard Schultz’s return to the CEO post at Starbucks has resembled nothing short of a panicked man caught on a runaway bulldozer, pulling every lever and knob [...]

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