Posts for 'Coffee bars' Category

Truant schoolgirls in meetings with unrelated males, large screens set up to show “scandalous films”, stages for music performances with light and lazer displays: Offenses too grave to be ignored by the authorities and too glaring to be continued on the sly for long.

It did not take much time for the Jeddah authorities to realize that a number of coffee shops were, in fact, places for dating and other offenses. Officials from the Police, Passports Department, Civil Defense, the Labor Office, the Mayor’s Office and the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice raided suspect sites over recent days.

In one instance a 14-year-old girl was found in the company of two males in their twenties after reportedly sneaking out of her house without the knowledge of her family. In another, two sisters were found with six young men.

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Brisbanites may soon have to stump up an extra 25 cents for their daily coffee fix. Coffee suppliers say they have been battling rising costs for a number of months - and it appears consumers will have to foot the bill. Brisbane's Merlo Coffee told brisbanetimes.com.au it had been holding off on increasing prices, but financial pressure had finally forced their hand."We've seen prices of our coffee beans steadily increasing for the past 18 months," a Merlo spokesperson said.

Costs have also skyrocketed for sugar, cocoa and milk powder, as well as shipping and packaging, suppliers say. Merlo is expected to raise the cost of an average coffee by 25 cents soon. Over the last two weeks, the price of `dry' coffee has gone up about $1 per 1 kilogram bag.

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Cumberland Farms, the Framingham-based convenience store chain, said it is rolling out a new iced coffee offering made from its Farmhouse Blend coffee recipe. In response to customer demand, the chain said that its medium roast is now available chilled. Any sized coffee, hot or iced, is 99 cents, the chain said, and to get out the word about its iced coffee, Cumberland Farms said that customers can get iced coffee for free on Fridays from May 7th through June 4th.

 This is the first time that stores in the chain have installed iced-coffee equipment, a chain spokeswoman said. Cumberland Farms has roughly 500 stores, most of them in the Northeast. A recent Globe story noted that java wars are brewing in the iced coffee space as chains look to court customers who are increasingly inclined to enjoy their caffeine in chilled form. That Globe story cited statistics from the National Coffee Association, a trade group that noted that 30 percent of coffee drinkers ordered a chilled coffee drink of some sort in 2009, up from 27 percent the previous year.

With consumers starting to ease open their wallets in the past few months, some Midlands retailers are taking a chance that an economic recovery will gain momentum. Here's a round-up of new places to shop and eat: Coffee fix: A Seattle coffee bar with a Southern flair is coming to Lexington. Jamestown Coffee Co. will open April 23 in Siena Shopping Center at 5166 Sunset Blvd.

The store aims to be a community gathering spot, similar to the coffee houses found in the Northwest, but the store also will serve Carolina coffee roasts and classic sweet tea. Owners James and Caryn Kirk also are a blend of the two cultures. They met at USC and spent a decade in the Pacific Northwest before returning to Lexington.

Jamestown will serve Island Coffee, roasted in Ravenel. The store also will offer more "adventurous" products, such as looseleaf tea, frappes, Italian sodas, baked goods and chocolates, as well as some breakfast and lunch items, desserts and gifts.

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Health authorities recently discovered sanitation violations at several coffee shops, including some famous franchise brands. After reviewing conditions in 70 coffee shops in Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province, the Korea Food and Drug Administration announced that 18 of the shops including a Holly's Coffee and a Cafe Bene had been using ingredients that had passed their expiration dates.

Eighteen coffee shops in Seoul, including some branches of The Coffee Bean and Hollys Coffee, were found to have violated food safety regulations, the Korea Food and Drug Administration said yesterday. Violations include using ingredients that have passed their expiration date and using ingredients which lack proper food labeling.

The Korea FDA said that it conducted a food safety check on 70 coffee shops in Korea and found the 18 to have violated safety rules. It plans to request administrative measures against the shops. Six branches of The Coffee Bean were included in this list, five of which sold a grapefruit juice that did not include proper Korean labels. Out of the three Tom N Toms Coffee shops included, one branch in Gangnam District was found to have stored ingredients in an “unsanitary” room which had spiderwebs and dust.

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Does Portland brew -- and roast, and buy -- its coffee better than Seattle now? That's the theme of a KUOW report today by Chantal Anderson. founder Jordan Michelman:

"Seattle is very stuck in a mold of what coffee culture was like 20 years ago and third wave coffee is very, very different from that."

What's third wave? Michelman told KUOW: "It works on much more of a thinking about it almost from.

A gastronomy stand point of being really, really obsessed about seed to cup, where it comes from, who's roasting it, where it's roasted, the duration of time, having the choices, seasonality, all these kinds of things. There's nowhere that does that here."

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Customers who purchase two tins of Nescafé Original from cash and carries from March will get 24 two-finger Kit Kats free.The promotional box also contains an A3 poster and five tent cards to help customers raise awareness of the scheme. “Nescafé Original and Kit Kat are two of the most popular brands in the UK and bringing together these products looks set to maximise sales and profits for the sector throughout 2010,” said Nestlé Professional Martin Lines.

“The promotion supports research claiming consumers drink 12% more coffee when they have a snack to go with it. By driving joint usage occasions, we expect to see an increase in coffee as well as Kit Kat sales, ultimately resulting in a substantial profit increase for our customers.”

Kenya will brand its top quality arabica coffee to give it a distinct global identity and distinguish it from beans of other origins, the Coffee Board of Kenya said on Friday. More than 95 per cent of Kenya coffee is currently exported as raw green beans without any identity, but from now on it will bear a green logo with a silhouette of Mount Kenya and the words Coffee Kenya. Although it is a tiny grower with average annual output of 50,000 tonnes, Kenyan coffee is popular with roasters who blend it with other beans. It is increasingly prized by high-end niche markets.

“People front coffee that is not Kenyan coffee and call it Kenyan coffee,” said Loise Njeru, chief executive at the regulatory board. “For now, we want to give Kenyan coffee a face, because you walk anywhere in the world and find coffee called AA, it could be AA from anywhere.”

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For the second time in a month, a Learwood Square business has shut its doors for good. On Jan. 17 Bean Coffee Café on Lear Road closed its doors for good.  “I’m so sad,” Yvette Hansel, who opened the large coffee shop on Dec. 11, 2008 said. “We closed as of Sunday.”

Hansel said she opened the store soon after the market took a huge drop. “I lost a lot of money I was going to invest,” she said. “But I wanted to forge ahead. You make a lot of sacrifices. For me, marketing was it. But if you don’t spend the money, you don’t make money.”

The coffee shop replaced Arabica, which had closed its doors approximately six months before. Hansel did some moderate redecorating, adding a conference room. Still, lack of funding for marketing hurt. “It never took off the way it should have,” she said. “I could not bankrupt my family. Many came through, but unfortunately not enough.

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