Monday Morning Coffee News
Happy Monday! Here’s what’s been going on in coffee news: On the heels of unleashing the Unicorn Frappuccino into the world, Starbucks announced their promise to provide 100 million healthy coffee trees to farmers by 2025, Oreo is teaming up with Dunkin’ Donuts to release mocha flavored Oreos, Biome Bioplastics unveiled a range of fully biodegradable coffee cups and lids, and the post in India released a coffee-scented postal stamp.
Last week Starbucks got on the unicorn-craze bandwagon and released the limited-edition Unicorn Frappuccino, which was available at participating Starbucks in the United States, Canada and Mexico from 4/19 – 4/23, while supplies lasted. The magical drink featured pink powder blended into a crème Frappuccino with mango syrup and layered with a sour blue drizzle before being topped with vanilla whipped cream and sprinkles of sweet pink and sour blue powder. The drink is supposed to start out purple with blue swirls and taste sweet, but as you stir it, it’s supposed to turn pink and become sour and tart. While the pretty drink was made for selfies (which appeared all over social media), it received some major mixed reviews, places like Twitter, Youtube, and Snapchat were inundated with customers showing themselves grimacing while tasting the concoction, while a much smaller number claimed they liked it (I personally didn’t get to try it as all the Starbucks in my area ran out by the evening of the first day).
Building on their Starbucks One Tree for Every Bag commitment, where they promised to plant a coffee tree for every bag of coffee purchased in participating U.S. stores and from which over 25 million coffee trees were donated, Starbucks is now working with The Sustainable Coffee Challenge, “a joint initiative of over 60 partners including corporations, governments, NGOs and research organizations working together to make coffee the first sustainable agricultural product”, and upping their game, promising 100 million healthy coffee trees by 2025 in a global effort to replace coffee trees that have been damaged by age and disease, like the dreaded coffee rust.
Just when you thought Oreos couldn’t get any better, they went and made them coffee flavored. This summer, Oreo is teaming up with Dunkin’ Donuts to make mocha flavored Oreo cookies. (As a little PSA – Oreos are a vegan food and one of the few treats I can still enjoy, so I’m extra excited about this.)
Biome Bioplastics is introducing what they call the world’s first bioplastic solution to growing coffee cup waste. For the last five years, Biome has been looking into a major problem with disposable coffee cups and lids – most cups are lined with oil-based plastic and the lids are made of polystyrene, making recycling impossible. In order to create disposable coffee cups and lids that are 100% fully biodegradable, Biome developed a range of plant-based biopolymers for coffee cups, lids, and coffee pods using natural and renewable resources including plant starches and tree by-products. According to their website, under the right composting conditions, the cups and lids Biome makes can be fully broken down into just carbon dioxide and water in as little as three months.
The Coffee Board of India and The India Post collaborated to release coffee-scented stamps on Sunday. The stamps, which cost Rs100 ($1.55), are made by spraying or embossing the stamps with fine coffee granules.
The innovative #CoffeeFlavouredStamp is the result of joint efforts of @coffeeboardI & @IndiaPostOffice. pic.twitter.com/OWg7egXGGd
— Coffee Board (@CoffeeboardI) April 23, 2017
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