The Coffee and Tea Festival (#5)

Hello and welcome to the 5th edition of the Coffee and Tea Festival. This is a festival that happens every 2 weeks (or so) featuring posts about anying coffee and tea. Sit back, pour a hot one, and lets get started. Our first post comes from Isreal (yes, this festival is a worldwide hit! - ok, not quite but we are trying). Muse presents bad way to start the day posted at me-ander. Now, if nothing else, it shows that people will go through a lot for their morning coffee. So, when I got up, a bit later than usual, but not by much, I started wash #2, the first washed overnight, made my coffee, took lots of water to drink, started answering my email, and then I went to finally take the coffee off the stove and pour it out of the perculator. I thought the problem was my stuffed nose. But the gas had been turned off. Our gas supply is in cannisters. We have two, one supplying the gas for cooking and the other as a spare. Yesterday, we had a delivery, since they must be replaced after one empties and you're using the spare. As a safety mechanism, they turn off, close the knob, on the open one. Otherwise if someone is cooking during the delivery, the gas supply is interrupted and resumes, unlit, which has caused gas poisening and death. I hope this coffee was Fair Trade Certified. For the tea drinkers out there, NerdMom presents Nerd Family: My Love Affair with Jasmine Tea posted at Nerd Family. That was the first time I had Jasmine tea and it was divine. Later that year a friend of mine gave me a couple boxes of Jasmine Tea she had received as a freebie with all her Chinese Takeout. Well since then when I am really stressed or sick I will have a nice hot cup of Jasmine tea. Does anyone have any organic and fairly traded tea that they could pass along to this lady -- or any other suggestions for a tea she might like to try? Joe Kissell presents Interesting Thing of the Day posted at Interesting Thing of the Day. This post is about a type coffee they call Kopi Luwak. My fondness for good coffee, and the lengths to which I’m willing to go to indulge it, are well known. As someone who loves coffee and craves interesting things, it is only natural that I should be intrigued by stories of a rare, exotic, and obscenely expensive type of coffee bean. Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to sample this coffee, but most of the people I’ve told about the experience—even confirmed coffee snobs—grimace, then raise their eyebrows in that “you’ve got to be kidding me” look. The story you’re about to read is, I assure you, true, though I myself became convinced only after extensive research and personal experience. He takes some time to explain why it is expensive and also gives a bit of a review. All I can say is that is expensive coffee. Kenyan AA is also expensive but I have to admit -- it is good. On a bit of a different note for this week, Starling David Hunter presents The Sickle, The Hammer, and the (Star)Bucks posted at The Business of America is Business. This post is about trademark squating and piracy in Russia. The article use one Sergei A. Zukyov as Exhibit A in explaining how people like him first register trademarks of well-known global brands in Russia and then hide behind Russian law to sell the names back to the companies who pioneered and own them- for a hefy fee of course. One of the hundreds of brand names that Zukyov controls in Russia is Starbucks. His asking price is $600,000. Starbucks, it seems, is giving their answer in court. Others, we are told, pay up. Given the fees that copyright, trademark, and intellectual property owners command, the vagaries of foreign patent law, and lax enforcement all make such decisions easier to understand though no less unpalatable. I know a bit about piracy in Russia and about how things like this are happening there. I studied the music business in college for two years (should have graduated with at least a minor in the subject) and really took an interest in copyright law and piracy issues. Stealing music without paying off the net has similar effects on the people doing the grunt work in the music business as big companies not paying fair prices for coffee farmers. That's a different day and different carnival. While I feel that at least Starbucks cannot take over Russia, it seems that $600,000 US dollars to use your own business name is crazy. We will have to keep an eye on that one. Speaking of Starbucks, Green LA Girl had an interested set of numbers posted today that she took from an LA Times story. Largest coffeehouse chains in the United States by number of stores, first quarter 2006 (Source: Datamonitor) Starbucks: 8,000 Caribou Coffee: 322 Tim Horton’s: 292 Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf : 213 Coffee Beanery: 200 Seattle’s Best: 160 (Starbucks’ subsidiary) Peet’s Coffee: 112 Tully’s: 100 Dunn Bros. Coffee: 85 Port City Java: 55 Of the 10 biggest coffee chains in the US, Starbucks (plus Seattle’s Best) owns 8,160 stores out of a total 9,439. That’s 86% No wonder they could push us and Cafe Evoke around. That will do it for this edition of the festival. Thank you to everyone who submitted. I will keep this going every two weeks so keep the posts coming. If you see a post that you think is something worth sharing, let me know. As long as it is coffee and/or tea related, it is great for this festival. You can submit other peoples work or yours -- right here -- and it will be included in the next edition. Thank you again and be ready for the next Coffee and Tea Festival -- right here at A Thought Over Coffee -- on June 26th, 2006. ..be bold Tagged: coffee and tea festival, blog carnival, espresso, coffee, tea