Tag Archives: starbucks

Branded chains and the flat white

Rumours are currently circulating about some of the UK branded chains starting to serve flats whites. The baristas at Flat White in Soho fielded calls from broadsheet journalists asking for comment about an apparent decision by Starbucks UK to start selling the drink.
Twitter1, on the other hand, suggested that it was Costa Coffee who were [...]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged , , , , , , | 27 Comments

The Fair Trade Finish Line

A little while ago my frustration with Cadburys advertising led me to try and sum up my frustrations with Fair Trade in 140 characters. The best I could do was,
Fair Trade – the absolute minimum necessary to get people to stop questioning how you source, or pushing you to do better. Not enough.
The advert [...]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged , , , , | 18 Comments

Agitating the industry

Last week I had the opportunity to pop over to Vienna for 24 hours.  It was the Allegra European Coffee Symposium, and I got to dress up in black tie and go to the Hofburg Imperial Palace for the awards dinner the night before.  I even got an award1 which was amazing and I am [...]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Video 11 – I’ve run out of titles

Here’s today’s video – bit late again, but still here!

Links:
Matt Webb’s talk
Coffee at Wikipedia.org

Posted in Videoblog | Also tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Diversity Vs Identity

I’ve tried to avoid writing about the current economic climate, and the outlook for coffee in 2009, and using the two “c” words that lost any meaning months ago.
Nonetheless it has been interesting to see what they industry press are writing about, what advice is being offered, what strategies are being deemed wise.  A word [...]

Posted in Coffee | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

A Clover quandry

Currently sitting on the bench at Square Mile HQ is a Clover. It was lent to us for the barista party and had stayed there for a while longer for us to play with.

Clover at Square Mile HQ

The internet has been all a flutter with the news that Starbucks have acquired Coffee Equipment Company [...]

Posted in Opinion | Also tagged , , , | 17 Comments