Monday Morning Coffee News

Happy Monday! Here’s some coffee news that made the rounds last week: Experts say a major coffee shortage is on the horizon, Starbucks is doing their part by giving away free coffee trees to farmers (they also launched a new coffee education blog). Dunkin Donuts celebrated their 65 year anniversary by adding Vanilla Cupcake Coffee to their lineup, American Eagle released a new line of jeans made from used coffee grounds, and STEEM’s caffeinated peanut butter created a lot of buzz.

The last few years have not been great for coffee growers. In 2014, a pretty severe drought hurt Brazil coffee yields and high temperatures in Central America brought about problems with coffee rust, a fungus that kills the trees, leading to a global coffee shortage of around approximately 6.4 million bags (!). The upcoming coffee season is seeing a projected shortage of only 3.5 million bags, which could be considered good news, except that now experts are saying that due to emerging markets and rising coffee consumption coffee production will have to increase in the next 10 years by around 40 to 50 million more bags. Between climate issues and difficulties faced by coffee farmers, this radical increase may be cause for serious concern. These concerns and others are currently being discussed at the Global Coffee Forum being held in Milan.

Starbucks is doing their part to help farmers who have been most affected by the coffee rust epidemic. Launched last week on National Coffee Day, ‘Starbucks One Tree for Every Bag’ Commitment promises  that for every bag of coffee purchased in one of their participating U.S. stores through September 2016, Starbucks will ensure one coffee rust resistant coffee tree is planted, beginning in Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Starbucks also recently launched their own coffee education blog, 1912 Pike, named after the address of the first Starbucks store. The blog description is listed as “dedicated to connecting with customers and sharing useful information about all things coffee — where and how it’s grown, how it’s best enjoyed, what it means to our planet and more”.

To celebrate their 65th anniversary, Dunkin Donuts added new Vanilla Cupcake Flavored Coffee to their Dunkin Donuts Bakery Series (available at grocery stores). Dunkin Donuts also partnered with Hungry Girl Lisa Lillien who created a fun Creamy Blended Cupcake Coffee recipe for the occasion.

American Eagle’s new denim line, Denim X Cafe for women or Denim Flex Cafe for men, features jeans made with 2.25 grams of recycled coffee grounds per pair. Why? Apparently the coffee grounds give the jeans added UV protection and neutralize odor. The jeans will be available for purchase starting October 15th.

You can now get more caffeine in a PB&J than in your morning cup of Joe. STEEM Caffeinated Peanut Butter is made from natural peanut butter and contains about 2 cups worth of caffeine per jar. According to the company’s website, the caffeinated peanut butter “delivers protein, electrolytes, and caffeine, granting you hours of endurance and focus, and freeing you from distractions like hunger and fatigue.” How much caffeine are we talking about here? Well, according to Caffeine Informer, one serving of STEEM has more caffeine than an 8 ounce cup of brewed coffee or a Monster Energy Drink, which, wow – really? I definitely want to get my hands on some of this.