Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending September 29th

For Peet's, disloyalty is a one-way street

This week, in the world of coffee:

• Winter is coming to an end in the Southern Hemisphere, but a heatwave threatens Brazil’s first coffee flowering—it’s currently 20° Fahrenheit higher than usual for this time of year.

• Starbucks broke federal law when it raised wages and increased benefits explicitly for non-union workers, a National Labor Relations Board administrative judge has ruled. The decision is the first nationwide ruling against the company since Starbucks Workers United started organizing two years ago.

• To, er, celebrate National Coffee Day, Peet’s briefly launched its own version of the disloyalty card—where customers can collect stamps from a number of different cafes as a way to foster community over competition—but made it one-way traffic. Customers of chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ could use their loyalty points at Peet’s, but not the other way around.

Read the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

I will hopefully be back with a new article this Friday, but until then it’s goodbye from Diego and his apprentice Amiri: