A longtime Portland and New Orleans barista has set up her own micro-shop, Cherry Coffee, in a corner of Stein’s Market & Deli, in the Lower Garden District.

In a profile in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Lauren Fink says she set up shop with an espresso machine and a Chemex to try to introduce more New Orleans coffee drinkers to delicately crafted espresso drinks and lighter roasted coffees not requiring all the sugary accoutrements found in many other coffee shops.

Here’s more from nola.com:

“I wanted to bring higher quality coffee to New Orleans,” Fink said. “There are some folks trying, but there needs to be more to create a standard of quality.”

Fink is buying from roasters including Novo Coffee (Denver), Counter Culture (Durham, N.C.), but she told the paper that she plans to rotate coffees from roasters throughout the country.

As Cherry Coffee demonstrates, Third Wave coffee in beignet- and chicory-heavy New Orleans is coming in small but steady packages lately. Mobile craft coffee provider Brigade Coffee Company opened around this time list year.

Facebook photos.

Responding to the Japanese 3D latte art fad, specialty candy maker Yawahada has created a line of flavored kitten-themed marshmallows intended to look like some popular latte art creations.

The “Cat Cafe” line comes in numerous flavors and includes handmade marshmallows in the shapes of a kitten peeking over the top of a coffee mug, kittens face down in coffee and kittens’ paws. Here is more from Yawahada:

After hosting the World Barista Championship and World Brewers Cup in Melbourne this year, the Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE) has announced it will be partnering with World Coffee Events to host the 2014 World Latte Art, World Coffee in Good Spirits, and World Cup Tasters Championships. The WCE events just wrapped up this year in Nice, France.

“The ability to foster the growing and vibrant coffee community in Melbourne is an exciting opportunity by continuing our partnership with MICE in their third edition of the event,” said Carl Sara, Chair of the WCE Board of Advisors. “In line with the mission of WCE to produce premiere coffee events around the world, our organization is continually seeking to build long-standing relationships with global partners, such as MICE.”

The 2014 Melbourne International Coffee Expo will take place from 15-18th of May at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds.

Michael Sheridan

Smallholder farmer advocate Michael Sheridan is shutting down his influential blog, the CRS Coffeelands Blog. In a final post today, Sheridan, a regular contributor to Daily Coffee News, says he plans to trade his pen for a larger sword, writing:

Other, more influential coffee blogs have already gone dark, and many of the sentiments their authors conveyed in their farewell posts resonate deeply with me: it has been great fun; it has been more work than I expected; the digital echo chamber can be seductive and disorienting; the blog has served its purpose; and mostly, the desire to spend less time writing and more time actually doing stuff.

Click here for the full goodbye post.

Sheridan, who has most recently become a leading voice on coffee rust and its long- and short-term impacts on smallholder coffee farms, says he plans to devote more of his time and energy to the Catholic Relief Services Borderlands project that he manages in conflict-affected farming communities along the border of Colombia and Ecuador.

We thank Michael for helping shed a light on issues that are often unseen or ignored by the specialty coffee community, and we wish him the best of luck afield.

Facebook photos by Tierra Mia Coffee Roasters.

Roastery and retailer Tierra Mia has opened a new coffee bar in San Francisco, its eighth retail store and first outside the Southern California market.

The coffee company specializes in pour over coffees as well as signature Latin-inspired coffee drinks such as the Mocha Mexicano, Horchata Latte, Coco Loco Latte, Cubano con Leche, Horchata Frappe. Owner Ulysses Romero recently told Inside Scoop SF that the broad menu and wide variations in brewing and prep methods are certainly intentional. “When I think about what we do as a concept, we try to create a menu that offers the best quality but also appeals to the broad set of coffee drinkers,” he told the blog. “We try to appeal to coffee purists, but also do drinks that have other flavors and ingredients.”

Due to city ordinances, Tierra Mia won’t carry beer or wine, and pastries will be provided by Patisserie Phillipe and Batter Bakery. Romero says the new space in San Francisco, as with all the Tierra Mia retail stores, provides “a setting that is comfortable, contemporary, and highly reflective of Latin American culture.”

The new location is at 3188 Mission St.

Spilled hot coffee has been a near-continuous darling of product liability lawsuits since the infamous Liebeck vs. McDonald’s case in 1994, in which an elderly New Mexico was awarded $2.8 million (the award was later reduced) after hot coffee from McDonald’s scalded and burned her pelvic region, requiring hospitalization and skin grafts.

While hot coffee lawsuits no longer make national news, they have actually been more prevalent, and should still be on the radar of coffee shop operators, who are: a) brewing and likely serving hot coffee and milk-heavy espresso drinks that are brewed well above temperatures that could cause second or third degree burns; b) responsible for securing lids on hot drinks; and c) may not have adequate liability insurance protection.

The nonprofit Burn Foundation says water at 140 degrees can cause third degree burning in one second of exposure to the skin. Yet coffee is often brewed well in excess of 190 degrees, and served in excess of 170.

McDonald’s Corp. alone settled at least three hot coffee suits last year, and most of the allegations involve spilled hot coffee in the 170 degree to 190 degree range causing second or third degree burns to limbs, stomachs and pelvic areas. Most often the patrons are in cars but not driving during the incidents, blaming a faulty lid for the spill.

The latest hot coffee product liability lawsuit comes from a 54-year-old Florida man, Francisco Borobolla, who is suing a New Jersey location. His lawyer says he recently suffered “horrendous” burns that required hospitalization after scalding himself during a McDonald’s breakfast. If the past 19 years of legal history is any indication, Borobolla’s suit — which currently seeks unspecified amounts — is likely to be settled out of court, at a big loss to McDonald’s. (The fast food chain was infamously burned in the Liebeck case, eventually shelling out nearly half a million dollars when Liebeck originally only sought $20,000).

When we talk of liquid temperature in the specialty coffee industry, the conversation is almost always related to drink quality. But what of drink safety? Does your coffee shop maintain practices that may one day help it fight a product liability lawsuit? Is there a temperature range for drink service? Are to-go lids composed of high-quality material and are they handled uniformly? Do you have first-hand experience with hot coffee lawsuits?

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this important but certainly annoying topic. Comments below.

Coffee Supreme, a New Zealand roastery and retailer with three NZ locations and another in Melbourne, Australia, has won a prestigious Dieline Package Design Award for its custom coffee cups.

The coffee company took first place in the non-alcoholic beverage category, one of 13 categories in the competition. Presented at the Dieline Package Design Conference, held in Conjunction with How Design Live at the Moscone Center in San Francsisco, the Dieline awards celebrate quality, creativity and marketability in brand packaging. This year, there were more than 1,100 entries from 61 countries.

The Dieline judges lauded Coffee Supreme for its innovative design, including the functionality of having all three sizes of its coffee cups in different colors.

Here is more from the design team, Aukland, NZ-based Hardhat Design:

Coffee Supreme’s take-out cups were already known in NZ and Australia for being unusual, distinctive and quirky, so while we knew from our re-brand brief that they wanted the brand to ‘grow up,’ it was important they didn’t lose their individuality.

The cups were also a great place to put across the company’s character & principles; their love & enthusiasm for the handmade craft of making coffee, their confident and quirky nature, their approachable and supportive staff, and the importance they placed in staying true to the good old fashioned standards the company started out with.

“We designed 16 individual cups, each with a different hand-drawn illustration, grouped into in 3 different colors to clearly distinguish between sizes.

The designs feel current in their style while also giving a nod to the past, referencing the traditional skill of the hand-crafted. You’ll see, amongst others, hints of 1800s etched signage, 40s movie titling, & 50s neon.

In creating this collection of cups, each with their own characterful hand-drawn or painted illustration, we hoped to replace the somewhat thoughtless routine of buying a take-out coffee with a more unique and personal experience, encouraging you to take a moment to stop & reflect; to look at the detail and humor in the illustrations, to look forward to seeing which cup your coffee might arrive in, having a particular favorite.

Put simply, this was about re-connecting people with the great cup of coffee in their hands.”

Check out Coffee Supreme’s winning cups:

Here are the other winners — including multiple tea companies — in the non-alcoholic beverage category:

2nd Place: Bolu Tea

designer: Curious Design

3rd Place: Paris Baguette Koffee

designer: Karim Rashid

Merit: Mio

designer: Landor

Merit: The Art of Tea Collection

designer: OD

Merit: Love in a Cup

designer: Elmwood

Wired magazine has put together a short video exploring the less than 2 percent of an average cup of coffee that is not water.

Did you know compounds in your coffee may include a butter component, a tooth enamel protector, or cockroach pheremones? The video actually builds off a 2009 piece from Wired that goes into a touch more detail about each component. It makes a nice reading companion to the video:

Several high-end Philadelphia coffee bars are starring in “A Story of Philadelphia’s Coffee Revival,” a “hyperlocal” marketing campagn. The story highlights four local coffee companies — Ultimo, Bodhi, Shot Tower and Elixr — tracing each of their roots back to 2008 and the opening of Spruce Street Espresso, an influential coffee shop that closed in early 2012. (The owners eventually moved farther down Spruce St. to open Odd Fellows Cafe, which has also since closed.)

“As far as these four shops go, their story almost tells itself,” says Jen Green, founder of HyLo Botiques, the firm that helped create the “Revival” campaign, which included a June 7 launch party with more than 200 guests and may soon include a mini documentary and a “disloyalty card” program (see Boston’s indie coffee disloyalty card, for example).

Says Green, “When Spruce Street Espresso opened back in 2008, it set off a wave of specialty shops — first Ultimo, then Bodhi, then Shot Tower and Elixr — that were, in effect, distinct businesses united by a common philosophy. This unique set of circumstances, coupled with the fact the shops are conveniently spread across the city, allows them to share a core group of customers.”

The campaign does acknowledge the coffee companies as business competitors, but says it is “not in a traditional sense:”

Instead of existing at odds, they engage as a network, the pulled-taut connections encouraging each shop to be better. “It’s not like we’re trying to pull customers from each other,” says Shot Tower’s Mat Derago. “We just want to be as good as them.

For more information:

A Story of Philadelphia’s Coffee Revival website

Ultimo Coffee

Shot Tower Coffee

Bodhi Coffee

Elixr Coffee

Facebook photos by Ready Coffee

Chicago has yet another new micro roastery and retailer, with the opening of Ready Coffee in Wicker Park last week.

Ready Coffee is a project of restaurateur John Grbac, who ran Jimo’s restaurant in Wicker Park in the 1990s, at the birth of the north side neighborhood’s renaissance as a restaurant and retail destination.

Working with roastmaster Greg Striver, Ready is house-roasting Fair Trade-, Organic- and Rainforest Alliance-certified beans, expressing a particular commitment to environmental sustainability, including a soft spot for polar bears. Here’s more from the Ready team:

We’re certainly not the only coffee company offering delicious coffees. But we are also proud of our green initiatives: We have a commitment to polar bears; they are one of the first animals to be effected by climate change; we ask ourselves with every move that we make, are we effecting the sea ice at all with this decisions?  We are carful to select environmentally safe supply chains, we use recycled materials, refurbished equipment, and environmentally safe disposables in our stores; all this combined with Midwest friendliness.

With a custom-designed, penny-covered coffee bar and a wicker Harley Davidson, Ready is open at 1562 N. Milwaukee.

Ministry of Supply making socks with carbonized coffee

Last February, we reported the research of a City University of New York professor who discovered that carbonized coffee can be used to inhibit the smell of raw sewage, among other practical filtration purposes.

Now Ministry of Supply, an upscale professional apparel company that made waves last year by earning nearly $430,000 on Kickstarter to develop its body-temperature-active dress shirt, seems to be applying that research. MOS is developing another product called Atlas, a sock that it describes as “like a Brita filter for your feet.” As of this writing, with 16 days left in the Kickstarter campaign, supporters had pledged more than $120,000, greatly eclipsing the $30,000 goal.

So what is coffee’s role in the new sock? Here’s more from MOS:

The moisture-wicking, heat-management, and comfort capabilities of ATLAS are all made possible through its unique combination of fibers, a blend made up of cotton, recycled polyester and carbonized coffee. Odor control is difficult in socks. As such, we turned to nature to find an effective way to create a fresher sock, leading us to coffee. Atlas uses carbonized coffee which has been reclaimed from coffee roasters and shops, and is processed through a pharmaceutical process to remove the coffee oils (so it won’t smell like coffee!) and is then infused into our recycled polyester yarns.  Odor molecules which are largely made of carbon are strongly attracted to the carbonized coffee. Atlas has a unique structure (kind of like a sponge with lots of surface area), which allows the particles to absorb a lot of odor. It’s the same concept used in your Brita filter to absorb impurities – giving you clean, fresh water. The odor is released the when you launder your socks – returning to its full capacity.

According to MOS, the Atlas socks will be produced since the Kickstarter goal was met, and socks will be available in two styles and multiple print patterns.

The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) has released the second installment in its Green Guide Module series, created to help coffee shop operators with practical tools for reductions in energy use, water use, waste and toxins.

Created in partnership with the Green Cafe Network and the Food Service Technology Center, the second module in the Green Guide series focuses on water conservation strategies.

“The initiative for the Green Guide grew from a stated need from SCAA membership and Guilds for more guidance and practical information on integrating sustainability principles into retail operations,” the SCAA said in announcing the second module in the guide (the third installment of the Green Guide, which will address waste reduction, is expected to be available in early 2014). “In addition, numerous studies on the environmental impact of coffee have concluded that the bulk of impacts are at the end of the value chain; thus a concerted effort at retail is key to lowering the overall carbon footprint of the industry.”

All SCAA Green Guide modules will be available here.

photo courtesy of the intelligentsia cup

It has been four years since pro cycling was held in the streets of downtown Chicago, but the Intelligentsia Cup, beginning this Friday, January 12, will change that. The Chicago coffee company, which for 2013 has been sponsoring the ISCorp Cycling Team, was named as the Prairie State Cycling Series title sponsor in May.

“Coffee and cycling are inextricably linked,” said Intelligentsia founder and president Doug Zell. “Most training rides start and end at a coffee bar. We’re stoked to be a part of an epic series incorporating the urban heart of Chicago as well as surrounding suburbs.”

The Intelligentsia Cup will visit eight cities in Wisconsin and Illinois throughout eight days. The Chicago “Criterium” race is scheduled for Saturday, July 13. While the men’s pro winner for that race will win $1,750, the men’s Category 5 winner will win something even sweeter: coffee.

“The start-finish line of the 2013 Chicago Criterium will be at the front door of Intelligentsia Coffee’s roasting facility in Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood, just a block from Goose Island’s brewing facility”, said Lou Vasta of Vasta & Associates, Inc., which is producing the event.

Here is the full eight-day schedule:

photo courtesy Ecom

Illinois-based Mondelēz International, Inc., one of the largest food companies in the world, has announced it is investing in a farmer training center in Vietnam.

Part of the Mondelēz’s $200 million “Coffee Made Happy” initiative announced last year, the investment is the first of its kind for the food company, which owns former Kraft Foods Inc. brands, as well as popular international coffee brands such as Jacobs, Carte Noire and Kenco.

Mondelēz is working with the 4C Association and supplier Acom (a Vietnamese subsidiary of the coffee company Ecom), and the investment in Vietnam will involve teaching agricultural practices to 1,500 farmers to help boost crop yields and potentially increase quality.

“The program is a key part of Mondelēz International’s overall commitment to sustainable agricultural commodities,” Hubert Weber, president of the company’s international coffee operations said in a company announcement. “Connecting Coffee Made Happy with our iconic brands creates a story that we can share with consumers about how we support entrepreneurs and nurture thriving communities.”

Worldwide coffee prices have dropped to their lowest level in nearly four years, to the point that the International Coffee Organization is warning that production volumes and quality may suffer over the next two years.

Creative Commons photo by Michael Allen Smith

Price drops were marked in all four categories — Colombian Milds, Other Milds, Brazilian Naturals and Robustas — tracked in the ICO’s composite indicator price, an estimated measure for green coffee beans worldwide. Robustas had the largest drop this month (8.5 percent), while the composite price for all groups reached its lowest since September 2009.

The ICO’s report for June says that low overall commodity prices combined with market volatility in China and the United States have been responsible for the recent downturn. The London-based group noted that total exports for the first eight months of coffee year 2012/13 (October to May) have reached 75.7 million bags, compared to 72 million in the same period last year.

With stockpiles still high, the group expressed concern that many producers may be unwilling to continue investing in their crops, saying in its monthly report: “This could potentially have a negative impact on production volumes and quality over the next couple of years, resulting in increased price volatility and a less sustainable agricultural value chain.”

Photo by Larry Jacobsen

In the first installment of the weeklong series “Food for 9 Billion,” PBS Newshour and American Public Media explore how biodiversity may be affecting small farms in Costa Rica.

The piece features the coffee farm of 65-year-old Ademar Serrano Abarca. Instead of following a typical tack in small tropical farms when he bought his land 10 years ago, Abarca left about one quarter of his farm untouched, letting the forest regenerate, rather than clearing his entire 10-acre property.

In a discussion with host Sam Eaton, Gretchen Daily, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, sheds the most light on how biodiversity, even on such small farms, can realistically result in a boon in coffee production

She relates the issue to the birds:

So, what we’re trying to find out is how many insects do they eat. If you have this little bit of tree cover here, how many Warblers will you have, and how much of a boost will the Warblers give to the coffee farmers? This one eats the biggest and most worrying pest on coffee. We found in its droppings a lot of those little bugs that are really destroying the coffee. So it adds a huge boost to the income of farmers.

And the bees:

you need to have forests integrated into the coffee farm right next to where the farmers are working, and the bees then fly out, and they’re workers, just like the people are. On the one farm where we worked, we have measured the value of that, and it boosts yield by about 20 percent, and that led to an income boost of about $60,000 dollars per year, which really put those farmers into a good economic position.

Click here for full audio of the piece.

David Hasselhoff is “Thirsty for Love”

Mock if you will, but David Hasselhoff has managed to turn reasonably good looks and a modicum of acting and musical talent into a $110 million career.

In a new marketing campaign led by Boston-based Full Contact, gas station and convenience store chain Cumberland Farms is now using Hasselhoff as its iced coffee poster boy in the Dunkin’ Donuts-dominated New England market. Clad in all white, Hasselhoff stars in the chain’s new video, “Thirsty for Love,” where he is seen sensuously sipping iced coffee while jet skiing, hang-gliding and just hanging out on a tropical beach at sunset.

In typical Hasselhoff fashion, the video has been widely ridiculed as a cheese bomb, while simultaneously helping rake in loads of cash. According to Cumberland Farms, a similar campaign with Hasselhoff last year resulted in a 147 percent sales spike in coffee in its core New England market. The campaign infamously led to “Hoffnapping,” as fans stole life-sized promotional cutouts of the former “Baywatch” star. 

“We saw the awareness and entertainment value he brought to the brand last year and are looking forward to the same this year,” David Heilbronner, senior manager for brand strategy Cumberland Farms, said in an announcement of the new campaign.

“Thirsty for Love,” starring David Hasselhoff

Hanna Neuschwander says she’s been “sitting on a little pile of updates” to her recent book, Left Coast Roast, for way too long, so she’s setting them free. Says Neuschwander, a frequent DCN contributor, “The thing about great coffee is that so much of it comes to us by way of excellent small businesses. But the thing about small businesses is that they change. All. The. Time.”

Left Coast Roast

Without further ado, here is the first Left Coast Roast adendum, featuring news on Ristretto Roasters, Olympia Coffee Roasters, Heart Coffee Roasters, Water Avenue Coffee, Equator Coffee and Wrecking Ball. The following is from Neuschwander:

Ristretto Roasters closes it’s flagship location and moves to thriving SE Burnside location

New location: 555 NE Couch St., Portland, OR

Food Dude over at Portland Food and Drink reported back in March that the original, closet-like Ristretto in Portland’s sleepy Beaumont neighborhood is shuttering:

Now their lease on the original 42nd street location has come up, and they have decided not to renew as it’s just not big enough to fill their needs. Instead, they are relocating it to 555 NE Couch St. at 6th.

The new space which is being designed by Accelerated Development’s Keith Shrader who also designed the Nicolai store, will have more room for education, a much larger seating area, and they hope to eventually server beer and wine. The Couch store will showcase the first Steampunk brewing system in the Northwest.

The new location is scheduled to open in July. Stay tuned for a visit report 

New Olympia Coffee Roasters location

New location: 2824 Capitol Blvd., Tacoma, WA

Right before I left for the Specialty Coffee Association of America show in Boston (waaaay back in early April), I stopped in Olympia to chat with Olympia Coffee Roasters co-owner and total sweetheart Oliver Stormshak. (Oliver and I presented a session at the SCAA together about the power of storytelling.) The roastery was abuzz with activity as the crew prepared to open their third Olympia location, which is set to become the company’s flagship location. It’s centrally located in the gorgeous 1938 Wildwood Building. The new cafe is STUNNING with hand-made tiles imported from Nicaragua, delicious art-deco-y interior arches, and maple accents. It’s modern and classic, and does perfect justice to the coffee. Over on Sprudge, you can find some photos that show off the space.

Heart Coffee Roasters announces new location in downtown Portland

New location: 543 SW 12th Ave., Portland OR [Not yet open]

Recently, Heart owner Wille Yli Luoma (say that three times fast) hosted me for an impromptu water tasting. Heart is installing a water filtration system that will allow them to finely tune the hardness of the water, which has a sizable impact on flavor (believe me — we tasted the same coffee with two different “recipes” of water and the flavor difference was shocking). In any case, Wille let slip that Heart was signing a lease later that day on a new downtown spot. This is perfect for Heart. Their east Burnside location in SE Portland has been great for them, but the new spot is tucked in among a number of design-savvy businesses that echo Heart’s minimalist, cosmopolitan vibe—home furnishings meccas Canoe and Alder and Co., cocktail lounge Kask, and Alpine-influenced restaurant Grüner (and, one of my favorite totally-out-of-reach boutiques, The English Department). It’s also just a hop, skip, and jump from another recent addition to the neighborhood, Blue Star Donuts. (Basil blueberry glaze anyone? Valhrona chocolate? Mmmm.) It’s perfect—and will make for some very enjoyable weekend mornings, sipping Americanos while I drool over brass kitchen fixtures at Canoe.

Water Avenue Coffee opening new location inside Enso Winery

New location: 1416 SE Stark St. Portland, OR

Water Avenue Coffee, located in Portland’s inner eastside industrial district, is partnering with Enso Urban Winery to offer a full coffee menu inside the winery’s tasting lounge. Enso has led the way in Portland’s burgeoning urban winery scene. The new cafe concept will include coffee-wine pairing options and collaborative tastings, exploring the intersection of wine and coffee palates. And though you don’t need any more reason than that to love the idea, there are also these awesome bags of sangria. The coffee cart will operate in the morning and early afternoon (current hours: 7 am to 1 pm), and wine tastings will start at the very respectable hour of 4 on weekdays, 2 on weekends.

Equator Coffee opens first retail location in Bay Area

The New Equator coffee bar at Proof Lab

New location: 254 Shoreline Hwy., Mill Valley, CA

Equator, which has been roasting in the Bay Area for over 15 years, is opening its first retail location in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco. The coffee bar is inside the Proof Lab Surf Shop, a community-oriented surf-and-skate shop. Proof Lab has incubated a number of small businesses (including an art studio for toddlers, a landscaping design firm, and a ceramics studio).  Proof Labs and Equator both have longstanding sustainability missions. Mix that with Equator’s award-winning Geisha, the Marin sunshine, and the “vintage surf” decor and you have a perfect excuse for a daytrip north.

Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters closes pop-up shop in SF

New location: None!

This is too-bad-so-sad for lovers of Wrecking Ball Roasting, the babychild of coffee veterans Nick Cho and Trish Rothgreb (for the record: two of the most interesting, knowledgeable, hungry, social-media-happy people in the business). The team continues to churn out fine coffees for sale via the internet and some dedicated partners in the Bay Area (e.g., Marla Bakery). They are looking for a new permanent location for Wrecking Ball—

…so keep your fingers crossed.

Coffee Borer Beetle — USDA photo

The United States Department of Agriculture plans to spend $1 million to combat berry borer infestations and outbreaks on Hawaii coffee farms. Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, who spearheaded the plea to the USDA on behalf of coffee farmers, says she hopes the initial investment will help end what has been a three-year problem on the big island.

“This new initiative to fight the coffee berry borer is great news for Hawaii and our economy, and I am very pleased that the USDA has recognized the threat of this highly destructive invasive species,” Hirono said in a statement following the USDA announcement. “Our state produces some of the world’s best coffee, and coffee is an important export from our state. But the livelihood of Hawaii Island coffee growers is increasingly being threatened by the coffee berry borer, as many farmers are forced to abandon large portions of their yields due to infestation each year.

In addition to the $1 million, government leaders in Hawaii have been working to get coffee pest management funding included in the Farm Bill currently in front of Congress. In response to the USDA funding, Hawaii State Rep. Tulsi Gabbard suggested that more would be needed:

“The coffee berry borer has been a destructive force striking at the heart of Hawai‘i’s multi-million dollar coffee industry,” said Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. “In just two years, our treasured Kona coffee industry suffered more than $9 million in market losses, representing a roughly 25 percent revenue decrease. The economic impact has been deeply felt by coffee farms, most of which are small family farms, and coffee processors are being forced to lay off workers or reduce hours.”

Here’s more from the USDA on what the $1 million program in Hawaii will entail:

The new program will be tasked with distributing effective treatments to local farmers and educating them on the most effective treatment practices, researching the genetic makeup of the coffee berry borer to find its weakness and disposing of infected plants. In his letter, Vilsack explained that the new USDA initiative will coordinate with local coffee farmers, the University of Hawaii and the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to use the following techniques to fight the borer:

• Distribute the most effective repellents to farmers and training them on how to best use these treatments

• Research new types of pest controls that could be more effective in killing the beetles

• Create a plant sanitation program that decreases the opportunities for borer to reproduce and spread

• Study the borer to find how the species is similar or different that other agricultural pest in order to develop better methods for controlling the pest

Here is a copy of the full letter announcing the award from U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack from July 1, addressed to Hirono.

All photos by Hampton Coffee Roasters

One of the first small specialty roasters on the east coast, Hampton Coffee Company has opened its largest retail location.

The company is calling the new Southampton, Long Island, location, its Coffee Experience store, featuring expanded retail, food, drink and other menu options. The “experience” concept is reinforced by the fact that the coffee bar is inside a former Mini Cooper dealership, with a glass wall providing views inside and out. It’s the company’s third brick-and-mortar coffee bar, in addition to a roastery and a mobile unit. A highlight of the new store is the large pour over bar, where patrons can choose from numerous brewing methods.

“What’s really exciting is that our new Hampton Coffee Company Experience Store has an Education Room where we can hold coffee-related seminars,” Hampton’s Coffee Experience Manager Richard Cummins says.  “We are looking forward to being able to introduce our customers to the farmers from around the world from whom we buy our green coffee beans.  Our first will be Ric Sriwijaya from Sumatra, Indonesia.  We buy all our Sumatra coffee direct-trade from him and his family.”