Coffee News Roundup: Week Ending September 1st
Donuts and unions!
A slow week for coffee news, but nonetheless I found stuff to write about:
A report from Brazil found living wage disparities among coffee farmers—not surprisingly, producers with larger farms were more likely to earn a living income.
Workers at a Dunkin’ in Ohio filed for a union election, the first filing at a Dunkin’ store in 12 years. A union drive at Dunkin’ is complicated by the fact that all the company’s stores are actually franchises and thus owned by many different people.
Instead of raising its price minimums in line with its international peer, Fair Trade USA is launching “a multi-stakeholder engagement and design lab aimed at developing a more scalable, higher-impact coffee program.” This is now beginning to take shape, although it’s still not super clear what it really entails (it’s mostly been a lot of corporate-speak).
Read the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:
I also wrote another article for Fresh Cup, about Instagram and direct trade in coffee:
‘Direct Trade via Direct Message: How Instagram is Facilitating a New Kind of Coffee Connection’
I’ll be back on Friday with a new Pourover article, but until then it’s goodbye from a disdainful Merlin:
