Saturday, December 20, 2008

Menu for Hope



Every year, Food Bloggers from all over the world join together for a fundraising campaign. They call it 'Menu for Hope'. Last year, they raised over $90K for the UN World Food Program.

This year Menu for Hope 5 again raises funds for the WFP's school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. This is the second year they are supporting this program, which assist the WFP's efforts to supply the program by buying directly from local farmers who practice conservation farming methods. With this program, they help feed the kids (which keep them in school) and support their parents and community farming. This sustainable approach to aid is something we believe in and strongly support.

Together they come up with a great list of amazing food related prizes for this raffle. Click here to view the list of all the prizes. Each US$10 donation will buy you one virtual raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

CoffeeBuzz: A Twitter for coffee?



by Imran Ali

December 13, 2008 at 6:10 pm · Filed under Locative, iPhone



Yesterday saw the release of an intriguing iPhone app for coffee afficianados - Kisky Media’s CoffeeBuzz, inspired by the volume of Twitter users who like to share the fact they’re currently engaged in a caffeinated beverage.

The app enables users to…

* use the iPhone’s locative abilities (GPS, wifi, cell triangulation) to locate coffee shops in the vicinity, as well as share your favourite haunts.
* show what nearby CoffeeBuzz users are drinking.
* microblog your current location & beverage with other CoffeeBuzz users, or Twitter your beverage, along with location.

The user experience is surprisingly simple, requiring no complex configuration, letting users get straight to the fun in a weird inversion of the oft-quoted ‘locative coffee shop coupon’ example telco execs like to pitch! Though sadly, my favorite chai tea wasn’t listed in the available options :(

Like, Smule’s Ocarina, CoffeeBuzz’s ostensible playfullness belies a powerful network effect, some locative smarts and the potential for incremental revenues. Creators Katie Lips and Paul Stringer - also cofounders of Treasuremytext - hope that moving beyond the 99¢ price can make the app sustainable, even with a modest userbase, but that the platform opens opportunities to partner with coffee brands and coffee shop owners. SBUX anyone?

Like Treasuremytext, perhaps what’s more interesting than the app itself, is the story of the app’s creation. The team was recently commissioned - by Liverpool’s International Centre for Digital Content - to create an iPhone development training courss, sharing its insights in a 30-page report that covers concept, strategy, design, development, App Store deployment and marketing.



CoffeeBuzz is currently available for the price of a good latte, for $3.99 at the iTunes App store; also, The Making of CoffeeBuzz is freely downloadable as a 6mb PDF.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Coffee-Powered Cars












Waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel, according to a study by researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno.

Coffee Grounds

With world coffee production at more than 16 billion pounds per year, the scientists estimate that spent coffee grounds could potentially add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world’s fuel supply.

For the study, the team collected grounds from Starbucks facilities in Reno. They used an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of the oil from the grounds into biodiesel. The resulting coffee-based fuel—which smells like java—is more stable than traditional biodiesel due to coffee's high antioxidant content, according to the researchers. Solids left over from the conversion can be converted to ethanol or used as compost.

The researchers plan to develop a small pilot plant to produce and test coffee-biodiesel in 2009.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Ethiopia starts coffee exchange





Ethiopia, Africa's largest coffee producer, has started trading the crop on a national commodity exchange.

In a move aimed at both increasing quality and the amount farmers get paid for their beans, coffee is being traded on the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange.

Replacing the previous, more informal, system of sales through middlemen, farmers will now be able to get direct access to current market prices.

The exchange has set up a network of warehouses to collect the beans.

Dominant crop

The Ethiopian government, which is backing the move, hopes it will prevent fraud, such as traders passing off beans from a lesser growing area as being those from a higher quality region.

Although the largest growers and co-operatives will be able to continue to sell directly to the global coffee firms, everyone else will have to use the electronic exchange.

Set up earlier this year, the exchange already trades in maize, wheat, sesame seeds and haricot beans.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee cultivation and the crop continues to account for more than a third of its export earnings.

It earned $525m (£354m) from coffee exports in the 2007-08 financial year.

However, Ethiopia still remains one of the world's poorest nations, and is ranked 170 out of 177 on the United Nation's Human Development Index.
Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/7760321.stm

Published: 2008/12/02 10:23:15 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

Centam Coffee - US coffee roasters try growing the beans they sell

Reuters, Tuesday December 2 2008

By Brian Harris

RIO NEGRO, Costa Rica, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Some U.S. gourmet coffee roasters have come up with a new solution to the problem of guaranteeing consistent quality in beans they sell to top-end restaurants and coffee bars: buy the farm.

Coffee connoisseurs pay attention to where and how coffee is grown, just as lovers of fine wines look to certain grape-growing regions.

Brooke McDonnell, owner of the Equator Coffee company which imports, sells and roasts gourmet coffee, began to worry a few years ago about the supply of the rare "geisha" trees found in Panama's highlands near the border with Costa Rica.

The geisha's sweet jasmine flavors are prized internationally but only a few farmers grow the variety, which can fetch more than $100 a pound at online auctions.
Instead of scrambling with competitors to scoop up enough beans to keep her customers happy, McDonnell decided to grow them herself.

Now she travels regularly from California to Panama to check on the harvest at a farm she bought a little over a year ago."It's a hands-on business," McDonnell told Reuters. "We view this as a combination labor of love and business venture."

Traditionally, coffee farmers and drinkers have been separated by a complex nexus of intermediaries, with coffee passing from growers, to local buyers, to exporters, to roasters, to cafe owners. More coffee exporters have begun selling crops directly from certain farms to particular roasters, locking in prices with long-term contracts to avoid the volatile coffee market. Only a few adventurous roasters have gone the more extreme route of becoming farmers themselves.

NOT WITHOUT RISKS

Texas-based Distant Lands, which owns a coffee farm in Rio Negro, Costa Rica and several others in Latin America, views the investment to grow and mill its own beans as essential to maintaining a reputation. Distant Lands looks for a specific flavor known in the industry as a "cup profile" for its coffee. By controlling the production of beans it cuts out the hassles of dealing with multiple suppliers.

The company uprooted parts of its 281 hectares of farms in Costa Rica to make sure only one variety of trees, known as "caturra," are planted and harvested.
"At this time we are looking for the cup profile that caturra provides us in this zone," the company's agronomy manager Jorge Jimenez said, looking at rolling hills covered with coffee trees.

But the risks and work of running a farm is not for everyone, especially now as some in the specialty coffee business worry that a slowing U.S. economy will hurt consumption of expensive espresso.

Jesus Mountain Coffee, headquartered in Stockton, California, started working in Nicaragua over a decade ago but has expanded with farms, roasters, and coffee shops in Hawaii."It is a tough business to make a profit," company founder Mike Atherton said.

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008