Topics on Globalization: Coffee

If you are not a morning person, here is a good incentive to wake up every morning; an alarm clock that will have your coffee hot and awaiting for you at the time you need to wake up and say hi to a new day. 

It´s name is The Barisieur and It's a beautiful piece of functional decor, with a removable Corian tray, drawers for grounds and sugars, and even a cooled compartment for cream.  The only warning is to stay away from your pets!

The filmmaker David Lynch has expanded his creative empire to the coffee industry. For a few years, Lynch has had his own coffee line named, of course, David Lynch.

The slogan is Ït´s all about the beans.. and I´m full of beans”.

The product:

According to the website the Organic House Roast comes from the Sierra Madre of Oaxaca, Mexico, from a propeitary cooperative. The coffee is “fair traded without certification. This means while the “Fair Trade Certified” label guarantees that certified cooperatives of coffee growers (as opposed to Single family farms) receive a minimum floor price for their product, the David Lynch Signature Cup does not pay to use the Fair Trade label on the packaging”. 

Here is one of the ads for the brand, which completely matches Lynch´s eccentric style. 

In the city of  Karachi, Pakistan, there is a small coffeehouse that opened in 2007, its name is T2f (previously known The Second Floor Cafe). Beyond serving coffee and sandwiches, this place has a political purpose, it has the intention to provide a space where conversations can flourish and where people are able people to engage with each other. 

T2F is the home of books, poetry, writers, talks, debates, filming, open mics, presentations and comedy. The New Yorker, in a recent article described T2F as a:

“coffee shop and community space, eight years ago, and it became both a staging ground for her activism work and a popular gathering place. It was tucked next to an empty lot on a narrow street, and the moment you entered the skinny front door, you felt you were in a different world. “You’d forget you were in Pakistan,” Mahmud’s friend Sheba Najmi wrote in an e-mail. “It turned strangers into friends.” Bookshelves lined the brick walls of a cozy room, which was dotted with murals. The staircase was painted with blue skies, black crows on telephone lines, and questions such as “Mama, should I trust the government?”

However, T2F suffered a major damage when its Director Sabeen Mahmud, a prominent Pakistani social and human rights activist, was shot four times after leaving the cafe. The coffeeshop reopened again this week, but its future its uncertain. While it remains as a place that is committed to social change through the liberal arts, creative expression, and open dialogue, fear and tension prevails. 

Pay With a Poem Campaign 2015

Data obtained on March 17th, 2015

Today Starbucks announced that they will stop their “Race Together” campaign, which encouraged its baristas to start a conversation about race with their customers and to write the #racetogether in each coffee cup. 

It seems a cursed initiative from the start. Firstly, the campaign was unfair to Starbucks employees who might not feel comfortable in addressing those this topic. Secondly, it also puts its customers in an awkward position. But also what intrigues me is the intention of making of trying to approach a complex issue in a 4-min superficial conversation. Furthermore, the marketing strategy of trying to make of Starbucks a place to force these kind of conversation. 

Finally, it seems odd that Starbucks promotes an open discussion about race and ethnic inequality while the company is also a target of criticism about fair labor, exploitation and environmental damage. How can the company promote itself as having social commitment for one side and then being an “evil” corporation on the other?

Reduce. Reuse. Grow developed an eco-friendly option in the Plantable Coffee Cup — a 100 percent biodegradable cup with native seeds embedded in its material, which means that it can be planted after use to help with local reforestation.

In the text "Brands and Urban Life: Specialty Coffee, Consumers, and the Co-Creation of Urban Café Sociality", Sonia Bookman describes the coffee shops as third places, where people can find "an informal gathering place between work and home where people meet and engage in a range of social interactions, from an exchange of glances to conversation." p 5 

Bookman offers a series of elements that make of coffee shops as places where people can find a comfort enjoyable zone, including interior design and décor, implicating local community, baristas, hospitality, urban café sociality, routine and familiarity.

I would like to expand these elements by arguing that changes in work habitus and new forms of employment have a considerable impact on the success of coffee shops as third places. For example, there are many workers that are employed, meaning that they can work from wherever. (designers, consultants or writers) A National Survey of the American Workforce exposed that 34% of the American Workforce is self-employed, and that number is expected to go up. 

These kind of changes towards the labor force has had an impact on the success of coffee shops, since they offer a kind of "social office", with chairs, tables, wi-fi and, of course, an unlimited amount of caffeine to work. 

I found on Open Culture a PBS a 3 part series, one hour long each, about the history of coffee. Starting with its origins, its history as a commodity, to finish talking about its role in big corporations as Starbucks. It also touches issues regarding labour exploitation, slavery and colonialism.

This is de series description "Black Coffee is a remarkable three part documentary that chronicles coffee’s origins in Ethiopia and its triumphant spread over five continents, sparking revolution, controversy, creativity, business and slavery all along the way."

In previous readings we have discussed about yuppies, hipsters and making drinking coffee a trendy thing. If there is a show that exemplify what a hipster is, it would be Portlandia. 

In this episode of the Cooking Channel´s "You are Eating it Wrong" the stars of the show Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, explore the main riles of coffee shop etiquette, including the best tipping technique, how to sip coffee properly,  how to pretend to talk about something serious and how to make a point.