A Midnight Coffee Break

Travel Warnings and Detainments Cast a Shadow Over America’s Biggest Coffee Trade Show

Amidst the U.S. government’s crackdown at the border and a raft of anti-trans legislation in Texas, some coffee professionals are skipping the Specialty Coffee Association’s Expo in Houston.

Conflating Your Personal Brand With Your Coffee Brand is a Risky Strategy

For paid subscribers: Recent stories show the dangers of building too much of a coffee company’s image around its founder’s personality. When things go wrong, it can blow back on the brand.

This week's roundup includes people improving others' lives–a light-night coffee cart; protecting coffee grinders from damage–but also a specific person who is making things harder for everybody else. Here's what happened:

The National Coffee Association has written to the United States' trade representative to formally request that coffee be exempted from any of Trump's threatened tariffs. Implementing tariffs against China, Mexico, Canada, or Colombia could raise the retail price of coffee for Americans by up to 50%, NCA CEO Bill Murray warned.
Getting a stone stuck in your coffee grinder is bad news (for your morning and also your grinder). In a bid to reduce such incidences, a team of Singaporean researchers have developed a way to detect stones during coffee grinding using acoustic sound waves.
A former ICU nurse in Australia has opened a coffee cart that caters specifically to Sydney's underserved nightshift workers. "It’s about what getting a coffee represents", Gerome Creencia told the Sydney Morning Herald. "It’s a break: you go and get coffee as a group, and have a quick chat. Good coffee can really change your mindset".

For more on all these stories and the rest, including how coffee could help those suffering from tinnitus (a bit), check out the full roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

At the weekend, paid subscribers received some musings on what happens when a founder or CEO's personality overshadows the company they run–especially when things go wrong (featuring two recent lawsuits, and also Howard Schultz because of course).

I'll be back on Friday with another in-depth coffee article, but until then it's goodbye from my friend Angela's cat Clem, who is helping with a sewing project: