A New Take on Mushroom Coffee

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.

Got your cup of mushroom coffee? Okay, let's get right into it.

Here's a quick summary of the most interesting coffee news from last week (as always, read the whole thing at Fresh Cup Magazine):

The Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide is back for another year, with its ongoing goal of analysing specialty green coffee prices and providing benchmarks and context for producers and roasters. The guide looks at so much data–more than 100,000 contracts covering 2 billion pounds of green coffee, and it's still only a drop in the ocean.
Mushroom coffee is all the rage, but what if we could use mushrooms and coffee waste to grow... packaging material? That's what some researchers at the University of Washington have done, using fungal mycelium root structures to create a robust styrofoam alternative. (Having recently watched The Last of Us, I have to say this specific image from the study gave me the heebie-jeebies a little bit.)
Starbucks is trialling replacing its to-go hot and cold cups with compostable bioplastic versions. So far, so coffeewashing-y, but because the new cups are opaque instead of clear plastic, they have also angered that most fearsome group: Instagram influencers who can no longer go viral with photos of their colourful drinks.

For more on all these stories, check out the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

Last week, paid subscribers received some musings on the future of coffee research funding in light of the shuttering of USAID and big corporations' continued parsimony:

I'll be back on Friday with another longform article, but until then it's goodbye from my friend Angela's cats Jun and Clem, who are enjoying Michigan's late winter sun: