Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Recently we crossed paths again with an old TV pilot from 2006 that bears rewatching (apologies to those who have already seen it): PilotLite – Grounds Zero. Called Grounds Zero after its fictitious namesake café, this 25-minute episode is among the more entertaining TV pilots you’ll find — whether or not you like coffee shops [...]

Located in the Outer Ring (‘L’ block, more precisely) of what the locals call “CP”, this café in the vast UK chain’s armada is reportedly the largest in South Asia. It’s actually a bit impressive, particularly given that the chain has designs on adding 300 more Costa Coffee outlets in India over the next four [...]

We really hate doing Starbucks posts if we don’t have to. After all, Starbucks hasn’t been relevant to quality espresso in over a decade. But if you’ve been following some of the Clover brewer posts here, you may be surprised to learn that Starbucks liked them enough to buy the company: Aroma comeback: Starbucks to [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

What will those wacky Swiss think up next? Apparently, it’s an espresso-tasting machine: A machine with a taste-for espresso. Yes, it’s the latest invention from the people who brought us yodeling and clandestine overseas bank accounts. But with the Swiss, it’s not all good stuff. They have also brought us brain-dead, monkey-operated, superautomated espresso machines [...]

One of the worst-kept secrets of the past few years is that McDonald’s has been trying to get into the espresso business. Today, news services such as Reuters and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that McDonald’s plans to launch coffee bars with the new employee position of “barista”: McDonald’s coffee bars to take on [...]

While we’re on the subject of humorous opinions on coffee purveyors… No matter what you might think of Arianna Huffington, you have to admire the cajones to publish today’s op-ed blog piece on The Huffington Post: Beverly Tan: Why I F**cking Hate Starbucks – Living on The Huffington Post. Author Beverly Tan, an admitted and [...]

Today’s Guardian (London) featured a humorous (or is that humourous?) piece on Nespresso and its lifestyle magazine: Nespresso isn’t just coffee … it’s an aspirational lifestyle marketing exercise by desperate lunatics | Food and drink | Life and Health. What’s not to like about the dry and wickedly clever British sense of humor? The author [...]

Today’s New York Times Magazine published an article on the declining design aesthetic of the espresso machine: The Pod People – New York Times. As the author puts it, “Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great machines.” And she blames the meteoric popularity of Starbucks, which inspired a great wave of ensuing greed [...]