Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Although its approach is more from the caterer’s perspective, the Web site for the UK magazine Caterer and Hotelkeeper published an article comparing the merits and tradeoffs off traditional versus automatic espresso machines: Coffee machines: traditional versus automatic. The article cites analysis where traditional machines used up 22% more coffee than their automatic counterparts. However, [...]

Today Bloomberg published an article about the latest generation of restaurant and home espresso machines, designed with the idiot in mind: Idiot-Proof Espresso Machines End Excuses, Target U.S. Market – Bloomberg.com: Spend. Andrea Illy of Illycaffè has to be very careful not to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, [...]

This second outlet of the locally owned and operated café chain opened with the 2007 New Year. It’s spacious, clean, and (like the original at 3rd & 20th Sts. in Dogpatch) has a Starbucks-like modern design. One of the things I really like about this stretch of 24th St. is that it has the cultural [...]

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 [...]

It’s no secret that I generally disdain superautomated espresso machines (myself and Howard Schultz apparently included) and the convenience-step-forward/quality-step-backwards home pod machines. So you may get the (false) impression that, when it comes to coffee, I am an anti-technology Luddite. While I have never placed PID temperature controllers on the group of my home machine [...]

The news of Starbucks‘ death has been greatly exaggerated. That’s all I could think of when reading the media and blogosphere response over the past week to an executive memo written by Starbucks’ founder and corporate chairman, Howard Schultz (as reported here on Feb. 24). In the memo, the founder lamented the loss of Starbucks’ [...]

Changes are brewing at the Tully’s Coffee chain, as American Express announced Tully’s as their latest ExpressPay partner: American Express signs Tully’s Coffee to contactless payments system – Assodigitale – Associazione Italiana Operatori Industria e Media Digitali. Think of ExpressPay as FasTrak® for the rush hour coffee queue — where customers can swipe credit cards [...]

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 & [...]

An espresso review for a restaurant where the cheapest item on the dinner menu is $210 may seem a bit irrelevant, but it is important for what it represents: a gold standard for food and wine. Back in September, we reviewed one of San Francisco’s most highly regarded dining establishments, Michael Mina. But to many [...]

Here’s an item in today’s news: Nestle reportedly to open luxury coffee shop in Brazil – MarketWatch. In some parts of the world, Nestlé’s Nespresso system, at least on the surface, appears to be making money hand-over-fist for them. Part of Nestlé’s strategy has been to open up Nespresso stores in places such as Geneva, [...]