​Part of the problem with holding the required annual shareholders' meeting is having to talk to shareholders, as Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz found out yesterday. Shultz was taking questions after his presentation when a representative of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM)--the people who funded the campaign for Prop 8 and have been spending money in any state that adopts anything but a 100-percent anti-gay message--asked a pointed question about Starbucks' support for marriage equality.
More >>

Starbucks/Kathryn Barnard

​

There's a bit of news that came one after this week regarding how two of the biggest coffee drink purveyors, McDonald's and Starbucks, are both rethinking the way they serve coffee.

MSNBC reports that McDonald's is trying out new, more easily recyclable paper coffee cups in about 2,000 of its stores replacing those polystyrene ones. This accounts for only about 15% of its restaurants.

More >>

More >>

More >>

Dave Lieberman

​Ask a coffee connoisseur why they don't like Starbucks coffee and it's a fair bet they'll tell you that it tastes burnt, that it's over-roasted, that it's the world's most expensive and least efficient charcoal filter for water.

More >>

​There are things you want, and there are things you need, but some products cross into the very special territory of want-need-now.  
 
TopBrewer, developed by Denmark-based Scanomat, is an awe-worthy coffee machine built like a sleek faucet. It can produce four cups of coffee in a minute with a few taps on your iPhone or iPad. What would you like this morning? A cappuccino, latte, macchiato or espresso? With milk? A large or small serving? Tap, tap, tap, tap, DONE.
More >>

Dave Lieberman

​
I've always wanted to run into a busy, buzzing newsroom and shriek, "STOP THE PRESSES!" The problem is that (a) I write for a food blog, hardly an incubator for urgent, breaking news; (b) 90 percent of what I write is online and shouting, "Stop the blog software!" just doesn't have the same cachet; and (c) the newsroom is nowhere near the presses, so they'd just pick up the phone and the drama would be lost.

Nevertheless, STOP THE PRESSES! Something besides fast food and Alberto's knockoffs is actually open in Fullerton past 10 p.m.
More >>

Dave Lieberman

​
We're sometimes accused of being too North County-centric around here. We can't help it; even leaving aside the snark about Laguna Engabachada, the fact is the population's up here in the 714, and choice in restaurants tends to follow the population.

Coffee, however, is a different story. There's good coffee all over this county. This is a list of 10--I could have easily listed 30 places far, far better than Fourbucks or the Coffee Leaf and Tea Bean. Read on!
More >>

​Martin Diedrich. The father of the coffee revolution in Orange County, owner of the first coffee shop to make an unapologetic, small, truly Italian cappuccino, as well as the first to introduce la naranja to the idea that coffee needn't be roasted to dust in order to taste like something.

Jeff Duggan. The mad scientist who started out in a cramped corner of a bakery in Irvine, the equipment specialist whose setups at Portola Coffee Lab look like something out of Dexter's Laboratory, and the first one to bring truly third-wave coffee to Orange County.
More >>

More >>