Monday Morning Coffee News

Happy Monday! A quick recap of some interesting coffee-related news stories that caught my eye last week: Starbucks’ new red holiday cups are creating quite a stir, you may want to rethink putting a smart brewer on your Christmas list, and Emerge Lab launched a Kickstarter campaign for Dripo, a 3-in-1 portable iced-drip coffee maker.

The plain red, sorry “ombre”, design of Starbucks’ new red holiday cups has gotten some backlash from some religious groups who believe the absence of holiday symbols and illustrations on the cups is essentially an attempt to downplay or remove Christmas from the holiday season. About the design, Starbucks vice president of Design & Content Jeffery Fields said “This year we wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories.” and “Starbucks has become a place of sanctuary during the holidays. We’re embracing the simplicity and the quietness of it. It’s more open way to usher in the holiday.” In a recent press release Starbucks went on to add, “Creating a culture of belonging, inclusion and diversity is one of the core values of Starbucks, and each year during the holidays the company aims to bring customers an experience that inspires the spirit of the season. Starbucks will continue to embrace and welcome customers from all backgrounds and religions in our stores around the world.” – On the one hand, the statements that Starbucks released do kind of point to them trying to be more inclusive of the many other holidays and holy days that take place during the holiday season, not just Christmas. On the other hand, although I will admit when I first saw the design it didn’t really say “holiday” to me, hey, the cup is still red, an iconic Christmas color, and, of course, anyone who steps into a Starbucks store during the holiday season will see plenty of holiday glitz and glam all over the place, plus Christmas themed-treats in the pastry cases, so *shrug*. Stephen Colbert addressed this whole Starbucks-vs-Christmas thing on The Late Show and I, as usual, completely agree with his take on the situation. See the video below:

You may remember waaaay back in January when I mentioned that Smarter, the British company that brought us the iKettle, was releasing The WiFi Coffee Machine, a coffee machine that can be controlled by an iOS or Andriod app. A team of testers looked into the smart coffee machine, and it turns out if the brewer is turned on, before the device is connected to the mobile app, it’s vulnerable to hackers who can get into the system of the machine and take control of the brewer, remotely brewing coffee willy nilly. But hey, this is a step up from the problems with the iKettle, which is relatively easy for hackers to get into and use to extract the owners WiFi password.

Emerge Lab recently launched a Kickstarter for Dripo, a 3-in-1 travel iced-drip coffee maker and tumbler. Dripo is an iced-drip coffee maker, a cold brew coffee maker, and coffee tumbler in one – and it has no electrical parts so it’s completely portable. I can see this being really neat to have during the summer. Check out their campaign video below: