Posted by TheShot on 02 Jan 2012 | Tagged as: Fair Trade, Foreign Brew
A New Year’s Non-Resolution? First, a Happy New Year to everyone. I may be in the camp that believes celebrating January 1 is about as arbitrary as celebrating March 6 as “New Year’s Day,” but I can still appreciate much of the sentiment behind it. Namely: leaving the past behind and trying to set a [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot 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 [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 04 Jan 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade
Last week the Christian Science Monitor published an article highlighting the economic pressures on Latin America’s organic coffee farmers: Organic coffee: Why Latin America’s farmers are abandoning it / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com. Just as Fair Trade designed their program to attract coffee growers through the promise of financial incentives, once they made [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Local Brew
We don’t reserve our Trip Reports for just the finer examples of retail espresso. As our database shows, we learn from forgettable and even wretched espresso shots. Falling somewhere between the two is Whole Foods Market. Their Potrero Hill location had to be a bit of a construction project, with a parking garage underneath the [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade, Starbucks
As Starbucks‘ future looks ever bleaker and bleaker, CEO Howard Schultz continues his maniacal lever-pulling atop Starbucks’ runaway corporate bulldozer. After shedding themselves of music, movies, and books, they’ve tried everything from an online suggestion box and free coffee promotions to membership cards to less expensive (“daily”) roasts and smoothies. Mr. Schultz’s latest lever pull [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Quality Issues
To the uninitiated, CoffeeRatings.com might look more like a horse racing tip sheet than a coffee Web site. But there are very good reasons why we’ve gone through the effort to quantify things. Just look at the chaos that can ensue when you don’t follow a system nor a simple baseline set of evaluation criteria: [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 19 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Café Society, Local Brew
This casual café run by Mission locals lives across the street from the slightly newer, and trendier, Sugarlump. That detail alone contributes to an unusual social “halo” surrounding this café — one that forgives the many sins it commits against good coffee. To be honest, the espresso here is quite dreadful. But this place is [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 25 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Fair Trade
In the mixed feelings department, the Washington Business Journal recently reported on Counter Culture Coffee‘s newest regional training center in D.C.: Counter Culture Coffee opens training center in Adams Morgan – Washington Business Journal:. As with Counter Culture’s other training centers, it is designed to educate industry wonks and general consumers alike on coffee flavors [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 15 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade, Roasting
Today InsideBayArea.com featured an article on Pete Rogers of the San Leandro-based Rogers Family Co.: Inside Bay Area – Compassion drives coffee company’s success. The article emphasized the Rogers Family Co.’s commitment to helping Central and South American coffee growers by buying directly from them and working to improve their living conditions. Most recently, Peter [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 05 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Fair Trade
Today’s Santa Barbara Independent published one of the more informed, and hence balanced, views of Fair Trade coffee I’ve seen in the past year: The Santa Barbara Independent :: cover story :: Bean Counting. By choosing Fair Trade coffee, you’re essentially outsourcing your ethical decisions to a third party proxy. All is well and good [...]
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