More Latte Art videos.

Labels: arts, coffee, www

There's a great article about our friends at Blue Bottle in the New York Times. It's all about Blue Bottle's new siphon bar and another high end brew machine called Clover.

Labels: coffee, community, world-class

We recently purchased a three month old La Marzocco Linea, 3-Group, Semi-Automatic Espresso Machine and Mazzer Grinders. They're great machines and we got a good deal! We'll be pulling shots soon enough!

Labels: coffee, world-class

From the New York Times:

To Burundi and Beyond for Coffee's Holy Grail
By PETER MEEHAN

Duane Sorenson and a few like-minded coffee hunters around the country will go almost anywhere, do almost anything and pay almost any price in pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee.

Read the article.

Photo from www.nytimes.com, by Erik Jacobs.

Labels: coffee, media

We're out to spread the word about the Awaken Cafe and get the Bay Area excited for our opening! I was reading a new magazine and saw an advertisement for a Yelp-like service for sustainable businesses called Sustainelane.com! I created a listing and we'd love for you to review us and let 'em know you're looking forward to the Awaken Cafe!

(You can also add your review on Yelp!)

Labels: coffee, community, spread the word, www

Commenting on a Starbucks advertisement that appeared in the the New York Times, the July/August 2007 issue of Adbusters Magazine asked readers to reflect:

"Imagine a city, in which there is only one kind of coffee shop. One kind of burger place. One supermarket. One pub.

Remember what diversity felt like? The fun of discovering something unexpected, in a place you hadn't been before? Variety and local flavour matter for vibrant, healthy communities. Go ahead, ditch Starbucks -- and enjoy some local culture instead."

Labels: coffee, community, media

"According to research, coffee might actually have some health benefits, and it's one of the few drinks available these days that doesn't come loaded with sugar and calories. It might guard against gout, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, and other health problems."

Read the entire article here.

Labels: coffee, media, perks

"This level of coffee connoisseurship is new here, but why has it taken so long for us to catch on? Everyone knows that the Bay Area has pioneered most food categories: We make some of the best wine and most beautifully whiffy cheese in the country, and while the rest of the world is just figuring out what "organic" means, many of our progressive farmers have already deemed their practice 'beyond' it.

"Although Oakland functions as the port for all green beans arriving on the West Coast (and considering that coffee is the second largest commodity market in the world next to oil, that's a lot of beans), SF has long had a reputation for being an undiscriminating 'drip town.' (Or that's how Eileen Hassi, the perky 29-year-old who co-owns Ritual, bluntly puts it.) Especially when you compare us to the Pacific Northwest, home to such revered cafes-cum-roasters as Victrola Coffee Roasters in Seattle and Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland. Indeed, Joel Pollock, Stumptown's head roaster, says that he's thought of SF as a city offering only "really, really dark roasts and having no true interest in single origin." And when I ask Erna Knutsen—the grand dame who's run the SF-based importer Knutsen Coffees for the past 21 years (her beans end up at Thomas Keller's restaurants) -- what she thinks of her hometown's brew, she says this: "I'll give you a clue. I sell very little coffee in San Francisco."

Read the entire story in 7x7 San Francisco here.

Labels: coffee, media, san francisco

"...But now Mr. Schultz is questioning whether Starbucks' drive for growth and efficiency has diluted that experience. In a blunt Feb. 14 memo, he warned executives that the chain may be commoditizing its brand and making itself more vulnerable to competition from other coffee shops and fast-food chains. The nearly 800-word memo questioned whether Starbucks' automatic espresso machines, new store designs and elimination of some in-store coffee grinding may have compromised the 'romance and theatre' of a visit...

"...In his memo, Mr. Schultz wrote that when in recent years the company switched to automatic espresso machines -- which have been used in some stores for at least five years and currently are in thousands of outlets -- 'we solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency. At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre.' Starbucks used to have all its baristas pull espresso shots by hand...

"'...While the current state of affairs for the most part is self induced, that has lead [sic] to competitors of all kinds, small and large coffee companies, fast food operators, and mom and pops, to position themselves in a way that creates awareness...and loyalty of people who previously have been Starbucks customers. This must be eradicated,' he wrote..."

Read the entire article from the Wall Street Journal.

photo credit: © 1999-2006 Dries Buytaert Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Labels: coffee, media