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Wake up and smell the coffee

by Annabel Bevan
National Website of Wales

IT'S OFFICIAL; we are no longer a nation of tea drinkers. This I know as, apart from the fact Starbucks has arrived in my hometown of Swansea - which, of course, is an indication that Wales' second city has also 'arrived' - my local greasy spoon is now the proud owner of a state-of-the-art coffee machine and, as such, has erected a shiny Italianate sign to say so.

The notion that any 'man on the street' worth his salt thinks that a cappuccino is a specialist breed of small dog and should be kept in the realm of the ladies who lunch brigade is, judging by the number of builders bums remaining on seats at this little eatery, a misnomer.

Freshly ground Fair Trade beans, frothy lattes and mind-bending espressos are it seems, even for us Brits, now a way of life.

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The future transcends coffee

BY ALLISON LINN
Associated Press

SEATTLE — Think there's already a Starbucks on every corner? Think again.

Starbucks is opening coffee shops at the rate of about 3½ a day worldwide, and that figure could increase, chief executive Orin Smith told shareholders at the company's annual meeting Tuesday.

The long-term plan is to have about 25,000 stores worldwide — more than triple the nearly 8,000 stores the coffee retailer has right now. And even that amount seems a little "light," according to Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz.

To accommodate those plans, the company, which already employs more than 80,000 people, is hiring 250 people a day, the executives told a packed house of thousands of shareholders.

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Property boom threatens Panama gourmet coffee

Reuters
By Tim Gaynor

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Panama specialty coffee growers Tuesday warned that a boom in highland real estate sales to foreign retirees threatens to dent the Central American nation's future gourmet coffee exports.

Ramon Garcia de Paredes, president of the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP), said a combination of low coffee prices and a spike in land sales around the town of Boquete could lead to a 20-percent reduction in gourmet bean exports in the next five years as many farmers sell up.

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COFFEE FEST WOWS WASHINGTON, D.C. & THE EASTERN U.S.

The specialty coffee industry in the eastern United States is thriving, if attendance at Coffee Fest Washington D.C. is any indication. Held this last weekend (March 19-21, 2004) at the new Washington, D.C. Convention Center, over 1,700 coffee shop retailers, restaurateurs, entrepreneurs and other specialty coffee professionals sampled the latest in specialty coffee, tea and related products.

Attendance was up 72 percent over 2003’s Atlantic City show and exhibitor participation was up 29 percent over last year.

“Moving the event from Atlantic City was a tremendous risk, however we now we are glad we did,” said David Heilbrunn, Coffee Fest Show Manager. “It seems as though all of our attendees and exhibitors were extremely pleased with the experience in Washington, DC. This is a clear indication that the specialty coffee and gourmet tea industries in the Eastern U.S. not only want, but will support a show annually,” he continued. “One can only wonder what our attendance would have been had eight inches of snow not blanketed the entire Northeast on Friday, the first day of the show.”

Awards were given the best new products and Bridgetown Coffee took home the first place prize with their innovative “Compass Point Spinners.” Second place went to Big Train, for their “Low Carb Chai and Mocha,” and Uncle Ralph’s Cookie Company (a first time exhibitor at Coffee Fest) received the third place prize for their new “Carb Watch Cookies.”

The first Millrock Latte Art Competition on the east coast was a success and featured many of the top baristi from throughout the Eastern U.S. When the qualifying rounds had completed Saturday the stage was set for the Millrock Free Pour Latte Art Championships on Sunday.

The championship was ultimately won by Chris DeFerio from Gimme Coffee of Ithaca, NY. While others came close, Chris displayed a clear advantage over all other competitors in both the preliminary rounds and then again in the finals. Second place was a tie with the judges “definition” score acting as the tie breaker. Winners were: 1st place Chris DeFerio, Gimme Coffee $1,000; 2nd Place, Dan Peterson, Hyperion Espresso $500; 3rd Place, Andy Cronin, Batdorf & Bronson $250.

After four Coffee Fest free pour Latte Art competitions, Chris represents the first winner not from Caffe Artigiano in Vancouver, BC.

Coffee Fest is a trade show catering to the specialty coffee and gourmet tea industries. Coffee Fest’s next show is slated June 12-14, 2004 at the Sands Expo Center/Venetian Hotel and will be co-located with the Great American Dessert Expo.

First-ever Sustainable Coffee Cupping Signals Emerging Culture and Growing Market for Higher-quality Coffee

At its first-ever formal cupping event, the emerging field of "certified-sustainable" coffee received gourmet evaluation by a panel of leading coffee experts.

The Rainforest Alliance event, sponsored by Citigroup, "Cupping for Quality," on March 14-15, was the inauguration of what will become an annual gourmet tasting of Rainforest Alliance-certified coffees. It marked the first time that a panel of experts specifically evaluated sustainably-grown coffee beans for their gourmet characteristics.

It also underscored how, as more of the painstakingly produced, environmentally and socially sustainable beans hit the US and other consumer markets in the form of specialty coffee, their higher quality is gaining recognition from the gourmet food world, while industry analysts predict ever-growing demand as consumers discover their superior flavors.

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Starbucks steaming ahead with aggressive expansion plans

By Jake Batsell
Seattle Times business reporter

The omnipresence of Starbucks has been punch-line fodder for years, perhaps most famously lampooned by a "Simpsons" cartoon featuring a mall filled entirely by Starbucks stores.
But if it seems like Starbucks is everywhere now, just wait.

"I believe that we will double the size of this company at least within the next five years, perhaps within the next three," Chief Executive Orin Smith told a crowd of Costa Rican coffee-farm owners and political officials in late January.

Starbucks, of course, already is one of the world's most ubiquitous retailers, with more than 7,600 retail stores in 34 countries. But as the company readies for Tuesday's annual shareholders meeting at McCaw Hall, it is pushing ahead with even more ambitious expansion plans.

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Gourmet coffee closer to home

Single-serving coffee makers are the new rage, and several companies -- including Miami Lakes-based Applica -- are battling for dominance.

BY LAUREN FOSTER
Financial Times

Coffee lovers in the US are buzzing -- and this time not just because of their caffeine fix. A battle is looming to persuade them to adopt a new way to brew coffee at home, and in so doing, to retire the drip coffee makers that are a fixture in millions of kitchens.

The ''next big thing'' is a machine that uses prepacked single servings to make a ''cafe quality'' coffee for the home.

The makers say these machines use a low-pressure brewing system designed to infuse the water with more coffee than the conventional drip devices, producing a taste similar to coffee made by professional machines.

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Sara Lee signs deal to buy some sustainable coffee

Reuters

CHICAGO, March 29 (Reuters) - Food, apparel and household goods maker Sara Lee Corp. (nyse: SLE - news - people) on Monday said that its beverage division has agreed to purchase some coffee grown using certified sustainable methods as tracked by a Dutch organization that promotes such efforts.

Sara Lee said its coffee unit will make an initial purchase of 2.5 million kilograms of coffee grown on farms that have been certified by the Utz Kapeh Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes responsible production of coffee, including fair trade.

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Smell of roasting coffee is a stimulant to memory

BY MARICEL E. PRESILLA
Miami Herald

One of the biggest tropical cash crops Europeans introduced in Latin America was coffee. It was the first real stimulant known in the New World outside of the South American yerba mate regions, and it came in the early 18th century -- shrouded in intrigue. In a couple of centuries it become a major plantation crop in Central America, the Caribbean and parts of South America, and it became woven into the fabric of our lives.

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