Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending January 19th

Another week full of coffee news, such as:

• Coffee farmers in the Kona region of Hawaii used coffee fingerprinting to bolster their case against a group of distributors and grocery chains who they accuse of using the Kona name to misleadingly label much cheaper coffee. After a five-year-long legal battle, farmers won more than $41 million in settlements.
• The denizens of r/decaf, a subreddit with more than 40,000 members, are very sure that coffee is bad for you. This corner of the internet believes that giving up caffeine is “a hero’s journey” and that doing so can cure a range of issues from acne and depression to insomnia and even existential angst.
• Workers at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, coffee chain announced their intent to unionize. A few hours later the company announced that it was closing for, er, “financial” reasons.

Read the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

If you missed it, you can check out my latest piece concerning the coffee industry’s myopic focus on shipping issues while Gaza and Yemen are bombed:

Coffee At Sea

So far the coffee industry as a whole has been almost silent about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, something I wrote about back in November. Coffee is a globally-traded commodity and thus is intertwined with geopolitics in a way that the industry loves to ignore when convenient.

The PouroverFionn Pooler

And until next week, here’s Merlin—apparently taken on a Nokia 3310.