Espresso drinks to be labeled with a warning

Taiwan

Isn’t it frightening to know that you might become addicted to caffeine after consuming a large amount of coffee? Recently suspicion has been hovering around a famous chain of coffee shops for overdosing the caffeine in their drinks. Due to consumers’ worries, the Health Department has asked all coffee shops to label a warning on all their espresso drinks. Taiwan is now the first country in the world to ask for a warning label on caffeinated products.

How can you possibly say no to a cup of freshly brewed espresso? Some consumers can’t help but consume this tempting concoction so that’s why the Health Department is requesting the coffee industry to place warning labels.

This warning label is to be placed on all espresso drinks telling consumers that it might not be healthy to OD on such a beverage. The coffee industry now has no choice but to do what they are told.

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The Call of Caffeine

By Tim Beyers
The Motley Fool

You brew coffee and tea for a living. Your customers are unusually loyal, and your revenue growth shows it. In fact, you just reported sales were up 20% from last year while net income was 13% higher from the prior quarter. Who are you? Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX)? Nope. How about Diedrich Coffee (Nasdaq: DDRX)? Sorry. Better luck next time.

Those stellar numbers were put up by Peet's Coffee & Tea (Nasdaq: PEET). The purveyor of all things caffeinated yesterday reported third-quarter sales of $34.5 million and net income of $2 million. Year-to-date sales passed the $100 million mark, with roughly 70% coming from its retail stores, most of which are in California. Per-share earnings were a steamy $0.14 per share, although the company said $0.02 could be attributed to lower than expected costs for settling a class action lawsuit.

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Coffee farmers bounce back

A focus on higher quality beans and chemical-free farming methods has helped fuel a resurgence in coffee farming in Guatemala.

BY MARY JORDAN

Washington Post Service

AMATITLAN, Guatemala - When a global glut drove the price of coffee beans to a historic low five years ago, Julio Flores almost shuttered the hillside coffee farm that had been in his family for four generations. Today, Flores' farm is prospering as soaring demand for premium coffee brings new wealth to the old fields of Central America.

"We fought and fought and focused on higher quality, and we have left the crisis behind us," said Flores, 49, wearing jeans and a straw hat as he walked around his leafy, seven-foot-tall coffee plants with beans ripening for a December harvest.

What saved his farm was a clearer understanding that First World consumers want only the best beans in their cappuccinos and lattes, and that they're willing to pay for high quality, Flores said. So he stopped using chemical fertilizers and pesticides and tended more carefully to his mile-high coffee plants.

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Access to global marketplace will sustain small coffee grower

E Anthony Wayne
Jamaica Observer

You might be reading this in the morning over a warm cup of coffee.

In the United States, that's a pretty common routine. As the world's largest importer of coffee, we wind up drinking a lot of it from many areas of the world. Even as the United States imports more coffee, we are aware that many coffee-producing countries are suffering from the lowest world prices for coffee in recent memory. Though the price of coffee for sale in the United States has risen markedly since the early 1990s, the average grower has seen his income reduced by more than half during this same period.

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