Poor Farmer

By Kale Roberts Mother Earth News October 18, 2012 Photo: Andrew Oakes via Mother Earth News Organic and fairly traded, shade grown and locally sourced— the list of factors to consider as we peruse the coffee aisle at the grocery store can be lengthy. But how many of us have thought about the pollution and energy consumption contributed once those exotic beans have left their home country and reached the roaster? “The dirty secret of the coffee roasting business is that coffee roasting is a dirty business,” says Duncan Elcombe, Sales Director for  Loring Smart Roaster , a company pioneering super-efficient coffee roasting. “When coffee beans are roasted they go through a series of endothermic (absorbing heat) and exothermic (emitting heat) stages. Eventually they start to emit large amounts of smoke and volatile compounds. In some parts of the country this smoke can just be pumped into the atmosphere.”  This is not to mention the enormous energy...

By  Michael White Bloomberg Business Week October 18, 2012 Coinstar's automated barista Photo courtesy: Coinstar/Bloomberg Coinstar ( CSTR ), which helped topple Blockbuster with its $1-a-day Redbox DVD kiosks, is now trying the same approach in the coffee market, installing dispensers to pump out cheap, fresh-brewed mochas and lattes at the corner store. The bright red Rubi box, standing 81 inches high and occupying 9 square feet, grinds arabica beans from Starbucks’s ( SBUX ) Seattle’s Best Coffee brand and brews a fresh 12- or 16-ounce cup of java through a one-minute process that mimics a French press. Coinstar managers view the $28.5 billion out-of-home coffee market as ripe for a player that can offer the same features that made Redbox the largest U.S. DVD rental service: low prices and convenient locations. “The coffee market is enormous,” says Ken Redding, a Starbucks veteran who is general manager of Rubi. “The market is very much abou...

By Oliver Strand The New York Times October 17, 2012 James Freeman with a Japanese-style siphon  at Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco. Photo: Peter DaSilva via The New York Times Blue Bottle Coffee, the respected California coffee micro-roaster that introduced the Japanese-style  siphon bar  to San Francisco before opening shops in Chelsea, TriBeCa, Rockefeller Center and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has a new owner. According to a  filing made with the Securities Exchange Commission , Bryan Meehan is the new president and chief executive of Blue Bottle Coffee Inc., heading a group of investors who purchased a controlling stake in Blue Bottle Coffee LLC for more than $19.6 million. Kohlberg Ventures, which invested in Blue Bottle Coffee in 2008, no longer has a stake in the company. The news was reported in TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal and other news-media outlets. Mr. Meehan is the Dublin-born entrepreneur behind Fresh & Wil...

By Dermot Doherty Bloomberg News October 16, 2012 Nestle SA rules the high-end coffee market in Europe with Nespresso capsules. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. dominates the U.S., leaving China as the biggest land grab for premium portioned coffee. Nestle, due to present results from a Chinese location for the first time tomorrow, has prepared for rising demand in the Asian country with Nespresso machines celebrating the year of the dragon decorated by Hong Kong-based luxury brand Shanghai Tang. Starbucks Corp.said in April it plans to introduce its Verismo single-serve system in the country in 2013. With Chinese consumers drinking only three cups of coffee per capita each year, compared with 604 for the French, the companies are wagering that there’s latent demand in cities such as Shanghai, where rising wealth is whetting appetites for western luxuries. Mondelez International Inc., the snacks and coffee business spun off from Kraft Foods Inc., is...

By Tom Bergin Reuters October 15, 2012 Starbucks' coffee menu famously baffles some people. In Britain, it's their accounts that are confusing. Starbucks has been telling investors the business was profitable, even as it consistently reported losses. This apparent contradiction arises from tax avoidance, and sheds light on perfectly legal tactics used by multinationals the world over. Starbucks stands out because it has told investors one thing and the taxman another. The Seattle-based group, with a market capitalization of $40 billion, is the second-largest restaurant or cafe chain globally after McDonald's. Accounts filed by its UK subsidiary show that since it opened in the UK in 1998 the company has racked up over 3 billion pounds ($4.8 billion) in coffee sales, and opened 735 outlets but paid only 8.6 million pounds in income taxes, largely due because the taxman disallowed some deductions. Over the past three years, Starbucks has reported no pr...

By Lu Chang China Daily October 12, 2012 A Starbucks sign is seen in Qianmen, Beijing.  The increasing interest of the Chinese consumers for coffee  has created huge opportunities for coffee chains and  equipment makers. Jason Lee / Reuters At home and in cafes, China is waking up and smelling the coffee When Diego Panucci left home for his first trip to China in 2000, there was one very important thing he forgot in his weeks of preparation - his coffee maker. The young Italian, who came to study Chinese, was facing a year without caffeine as precious few coffee shops existed in China back then, when the growing middle classes had yet to begin developing a taste for arabica and robusta beans. "It was really killing me, and when I told the taxi driver to find a cafe, he didn't have the faintest idea what I was talking about," says Panucci, who can't begin a day without having his espresso. "I found instant coffee instead. It wasn...

By Leslie Josephs and Alexandra Wexler The Wall Street Journal October 8, 2012 Brazil's coffee farmers have been hoarding some of their crop, waiting for the right price. But buyers are testing their patience. Coffee has been trickling out of No. 1 supplier Brazil more slowly than usual this year. The Brazilian government estimates that the annual coffee harvest that wrapped up last month is a record, but the South American country's exports are down on the year. The reason: Farmers haven't been happy with prices, which hit two-year lows in June. But big coffee buyers like Folgers-maker J.M. Smucker Co. are in no rush to buy. Global stockpiles of arabica beans, the coveted variety used in gourmet blends, are at their highest level in more than two years. Meanwhile, coffee demand is slowing due to the woes in Europe and more supplies are expected in the coming months. The situation stands in contrast to 2011, when coffee roasters and food companies we...