Who Will Fund the Future of Coffee?
For paid subscribers: some thoughts on the loss of USAID funding for coffee research, and the possibly misguided hope that corporations will step up.
“Absolutely unbearable”; “The worst day of the year”; “Mentally and physically abusive”; this is how baristas describe Starbucks’ Red Cup Day, which took place last week. It’s the busiest day of the company’s year, where they hand out reusable red cups to customers who purchase a seasonal drink.
This year, the union fought back: the Red Cup Rebellion was a coordinated one-day strike involving thousands of baristas and over a hundred stores across the US.
Read about that, and all the other coffee news over at Fresh Cup Magazine:
If you missed it, you can read my latest post in which I interviewed Amethyst Coffee’s Elle Taylor about her company’s experiment with removing tips, the decision to close, and what counts as success in coffee:
And of course, Merlin is here to see us off:
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