Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

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 [...]

Tags: direct_trade, fair_trade, mcdonalds, organic_coffee, slow_food_nation, Starbucks, tullys_coffee, uk_cafes, uk_coffee

9 Comments »

We first encountered Verve at Slow Food Nation ‘08 (SFN), where they contributed beans, baristas, and other support for the event. Originally, they had planned to open this café and roastery in Berkeley. However, one of the owners moved to Santa Cruz and the rest was history.
The “joke” from some of the Verve baristas at [...]

Tags: acf_cups, coffee_roasters, espresso_review, la_marzocco, santa_cruz_coffee, slow_food_nation

No Comments »

Whether it’s coffee or Slow Food Nation (or both), today there’s a strong public undercurrent of knee-jerk, reactionary dismissiveness of anybody who dares suggest that the generic brand-X-in-a-can isn’t good enough for them.
The mistaken public belief is that most of the things we eat and drink today are somehow normal, inevitable, and “natural” outcomes — [...]

Tags: big_four_coffee, fair_trade, mcdonalds, Robusta, slow_food, slow_food_nation

6 Comments »

As one of the final events of Slow Food Nation ‘08, we attended The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity Coffee Presidia tasting at Coffee Bar.
It is quite a mouthful of nouns. But the key points are that Slow Food is a non-profit, its Foundation for Biodiversity is a countermeasure effort to the dwindling food product [...]

Tags: coffee_bar, coffee_cupping, coffee_growers, dominican_republic_coffee, fair_trade, guatemala_coffee, slow_food, slow_food_nation

No Comments »

It is Labor Day weekend in San Francisco. And the only thing keeping us from inaugurating Itching Man, our long-proposed rival event to Burning Man, was Slow Food Nation ‘08.
For a little background, we mentioned this event in a post last week. Given how it had been billed, we had hopes there would be elements [...]

Tags: clover_brewer, coffee_blends, dark_roasts, direct_trade, ecco_caffe, fair_trade, greenwashing, intelligentsia, ritual_roasters, slow_food, slow_food_nation

1 Comment »