Are you a Starbucks worker in New York City? You could be entitled to compensation. Plus, farmers in Brazil are switching from arabica to robusta, and after eight years, Nestlé mulls selling Blue Bottle Coffee.
‘Why the World’s Top Coffee Producer is Switching Up Its Beans’ – via Bloomberg
For years, climate change has irrevocably changed coffee-producing countries. Farmers must reckon with rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfall patterns, including droughts and floods that can severely damage coffee plants, resulting in lower yields and lower-quality cherries. In an industry where coffee prices are already volatile and sometimes lower than the cost of farming, climate change has had a devastating effect on many producers.
Coffee, especially the arabica species, is particularly vulnerable to uncertainty caused by weather fluctuations. Farmers are looking for ways to cope: some are moving production to higher elevation land in search of cooler temperatures; others are planting more resilient coffee varieties in the hope they can better handle temperature changes.
In Brazil, more and more farmers are turning to arabica’s hardier cousin, robusta, according to a Bloomberg report by Renata Carlos Daou. Although arabica continues to dominate—Brazil is the world’s largest arabica grower—robusta production has increased by 81% over the past 10 years. In just the last growing season, robusta production jumped nearly 22% compared to the previous harvest.
Most of this switch can be attributed to the pressure farmers face due to climate change. “It wasn’t necessarily demand that resulted in the growth of robusta production,” said Fernando Maximiliano from the financial services firm StoneX. “In reality, climate problems and losses in arabica were the main factors that contributed to stimulating robusta growth.”
Robusta is generally considered more resilient than arabica. But it’s worth noting that research from 2020 found that robusta may not be the climate-change-hardy savior it’s often been portrayed as. The study found that robusta’s optimal growing temperature is lower than previously thought, and that every 1°C increase reduces yields by about 14%.
Climate change isn’t the only reason Brazilian farmers are making the switch. Robusta plants produce more coffee cherries, potentially leading to higher profits. And while robusta has generally been considered inferior in taste, farmers and researchers have been working to improve it.
The hope is that this will lead to increased sales: “Improving quality allows you to increase the percentage of robusta in blends around the world,” Marcio Ferreira from Brazil’s national exporter group Cecafe told Reuters.
Read more on Brazil’s robusta reinvention here or via Fortune here.
‘Nestlé Explores Sale of Blue Bottle Coffee, Sources Say’ – via Reuters
Eight years after acquiring a majority stake in Blue Bottle Coffee, Nestlé is reportedly exploring a sale of the specialty coffee chain.
Three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters’ Abigail Summerville that the move is part of a wider “strategic review” from the Swiss multinational. The company’s new CEO is looking to streamline operations and “exit the business of operating physical retail locations,” Summerville wrote.
Nestlé took majority control of Blue Bottle in 2017 in a deal that Bloomberg reported was worth $425 million. Since the takeover, Blue Bottle has expanded significantly, from 40 stores at the time to around 100 today, opening locations across the U.S. as well as in South Korea, China, and Hong Kong. In 2024, workers at stores in Boston unionized, a movement that spread to California’s Bay Area a year later.
The news follows a similar decision by Coca-Cola earlier this year to sell Costa Coffee. Reports suggest that the beverage giant is willing to sell the underperforming U.K.-based chain for half of what it paid; likewise, sources told Reuters that any sale of Blue Bottle is likely to be at a discount.
Over the years, Nestlé has been integrating Blue Bottle into its wider coffee business. Beginning in 2023, Blue Bottle and Nespresso launched a series of “co-developed” capsules. One source told Summerville that an option Nestlé is considering is to offload Blue Bottle’s roughly 100 cafes while keeping the company’s intellectual property to continue selling such products.
Read the full story on the sale here.
‘Starbucks To Pay About $35M to NYC Workers To Settle Claims It Violated Labor Law’ – via ABC News
Starbucks will pay more than $35 million to thousands of its workers in New York City in a local labor law settlement. Last Monday, the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced an agreement with the megachain to pay 15,000 workers for failing to provide stable, predictable schedules over the course of three years.
New York’s Fair Workweek law requires employers to give workers their schedules at least 14 days in advance and to keep those schedules consistent from week to week. According to the agreement, Starbucks failed to provide workers regular schedules, cut hours without obtaining written consent, and prioritised new hires over existing employees when assigning shifts.
Affected hourly workers will receive $50 for each week they worked between July 4, 2021, and July 7, 2024. The agreement is the result of an investigation launched three years ago that grew from 27 workers at 23 locations to include more than 300 stores across the city.
“With this landmark settlement, we’ll put tens of millions of dollars back into the pockets of hardworking New Yorkers and reinforce every New Yorker’s right to a reliable schedule, full hours and basic dignity,” New York City mayor Eric Adams said in a statement. In addition to worker restitution, Starbucks will pay $3.4 million in civil penalties and agree to comply with the law in the future.
Starbucks said that, while it is committed to complying with local laws, New York’s Fair Workweek law is especially complicated. “This (law) is notoriously challenging to manage and this isn’t just a Starbucks issue, nearly every retailer in the city faces these roadblocks,” company spokesperson Jaci Anderson said.
Read more on the Starbucks settlement here.
More News
‘Investor Sues Michigan Retirement Fund Over Failed Kona Hills Project’ – via Daily Coffee News
‘CONAB Expecting Bumper Brazilian Coffee Crop’ – via Global Coffee Report
‘Should No Ice Mean More Coffee? The Internet Has Thoughts’ – via Sprudge
‘Brazil’s Expocacer to Host First Auction Through Blockchain-Based Coffee Chain’ – via Daily Coffee News
‘Applications Are Open For The 2026 Barista League’ – via Sprudge
‘Vietnam Surpasses US$7.6 Billion of Coffee Exports in 2025’ – via Global Coffee Report
The Week in Coffee Unionizing
As the Starbucks Workers United strike entered its third week, the union held a rally outside the Empire State Building on Thursday. The iconic skyscraper is home to a Starbucks Reserve store and the company’s regional headquarters.
Demonstrators with SBWU were joined by representatives from other unions such as AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. SEIU president April Verrett told CNBC that “their fight is a fight really for all of us, to workers across the country, to corporations like Starbucks, across the country that workers are fed up with the status quo, and they’re not going to take it anymore.”
Organizers asked for a meeting with Starbucks executives, but were denied, according to a report by Jenny Brown in Labor Notes. During the protest, 12 people were arrested for blocking the building’s entrance.
The two sides have not yet resumed negotiations, and despite the strike action, Starbucks said the impact on its stores was minimal. “Regardless of the union’s plans, we do not anticipate any meaningful disruption,” Starbucks spokesperson Anderson said. “When the union is ready to return to the bargaining table, we’re ready to talk.”
Is Coffee Good For You?
Research has shown that people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have significantly reduced life expectancies compared to the general population. A new study by researchers in the United Kingdom found that drinking 3-4 cups may help slow premature ageing in people affected by mental illness.
The reason people with mental illnesses have shorter life spans? Telomeres. A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA at the end of chromosomes that helps protect the chromosomes from damage. Telomeres wear down and shorten naturally over time, and are considered an indicator of the ageing process. People with serious psychiatric disorders tend to have shorter telomeres, with the result that their life spans can be 10-20 years shorter than those of the average person.
For the study, published in the journal BMJ Mental Health, researchers examined 436 participants from four psychiatric units in Oslo, Norway. They collected data on telomere length and coffee consumption between 2007 and 2018.
They found that participants who drank 3-4 cups of coffee per day had, on average, longer telomeres than those who drank none. They were, the authors write, the equivalent of five years younger in biological age. However, the effects disappeared for those who drank five or more cups per day.
The researchers theorise that coffee’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties may contribute to this difference. Telomeres are sensitive to inflammation and oxidative stress, which is an imbalance between free radicals and antioxidants in the body.
The study had some limitations, the authors report. It used self-reported coffee consumption data and didn’t collect detailed information on the type or timing of coffee consumption, nor on other sources of caffeine. The authors suggest additional studies are needed to confirm their results.
“Many of the factors that are known to affect biological aging, such as genetics and negative stressful life experiences, are beyond our control,” the study’s lead author, Dr Monica Aas, said in a press release. “Lifestyle factors like coffee consumption are something we can actively modify, making research like this particularly valuable.”
Beyond the Headlines
‘The Moral Cost of Dubai’s Coffee Boom’ by Fionn Pooler
‘How India’s Specialty Coffee Industry Is Coming of Age’ by Sohel Sarkar
