Every Monday, we send out a newsletter called Coffee News Club. Thousands of subscribers get an easily digestible roundup, curated by our news writer, Fionn Pooler, of the latest news, industry trends, and breaking coffee coverage—all directly delivered to their inboxes.
If you’re reading this and already feeling FOMO, you can sign up for the newsletter here, but if you want to learn a little more about what we cover, here’s a little sneak peak:
⚡ Breaking News 🌀
Every week, we compile all the biggest headlines in coffee and distill stories down to the ideas and takeaways readers need to know.
What caused DC-based Compass Coffee to allegedly hire 152 new employees, including CEOs, before a union vote? We’ve got that story here.
Are Americans really drinking more coffee? We give you the latest stats and data from the National Coffee Association on consumer trends.
What the heck is going on with Rudy Giuliani’s coffee company, Rudy Coffee? We’re still struggling to understand that one (it’s a wild story involving subpoenas and multiple bankruptcies), but we find stories and reports to help illuminate this and other industry news.
A lot happens in the coffee world, so think of Coffee News Club as an aggregate of the week’s news. We do our best to understand what’s happening in the coffee world, deliver insights that speak to readers, and provide the context needed to understand every story’s impact.
We also highlight specific topics in the industry. Usually, these are areas that we see come up in news coverage a lot, so we cull the internet looking for stories that address the subtopics we think are pivotal to understanding the current landscape of coffee:
- More News: We can’t give detailed breakdowns of every news article, but we always try to include links to stories we think our readers would find fascinating. Think of this section as a reading list, a place to do a deep dive into all the happenings in the industry for the past week.
- This Week in Coffee Unionizing: Coffee unions are one of the industry’s biggest subtopics, and there’s so much more to know than just about new coffee shops organizing or ratifying contracts. From court cases to the impact on workers’ rights to federal legislation, coffee unions are a pivotal topic dominating the news—and a topic we’re dedicated to highlighting.
- This Week in Corporate Coffeewashing: We believe in examining what’s in the news and why—and we try not to let big companies off the hook. Have you ever seen a brand get too much praise for an initiative that feels less impactful than it’s being sold? Fionn wrote a whole story defining coffeewashing, but this is the section where we examine claims and press releases from big brands and ask, “Is this really doing the good for the coffee industry that it claims?”
- Coffee and the Climate Crisis: Coffee is under threat due to climate change. That’s indisputable, and in this section, we share stories about coffee and the environment. We talk about areas hit by fluctuations in weather and the impact on coffee growing, but we also talk about things like dairy farming, sustainability initiatives, and regulations in the EU’s deforestation legislation—and how that will change the coffee industry (if the deforestation legislation is new to you, Fionn published an excellent primer on the topic).
- Is Coffee Good For You: Will this question ever go away? Perhaps not, but nearly every week, we come across a headline that claims coffee is good/bad/will help you live longer/will kill you. We do our best to include only reporting from universities and research institutes examining this question and attempting to elucidate coffee’s impact on the body.
- Beyond the Headlines: Not every coffee-related story is breaking news, so we compile articles we’ve read that address evergreen and always prescient issues within the industry. Usually, we include 1-2 stories recently published on Fresh Cup’s site (What can we say? We’re proud of our work!), but we find and share stories in all types of publications. Past stories we’ve shared in this section include NPR reports about Starbucks’ turn in front of the Supreme Court, farm-centric looks at how intercropping can impact coffee quality, and the wild world of parasocial relationships amongst coffee influencers.
If you’ve made it this far and still haven’t signed up for the club, what are you waiting for? New issues of the Coffee News Club newsletter hit inboxes every Monday at 6:00 AM CST, so you can start your week feeling informed and ready to tackle anything.
