Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Costa acquires coffee shops in central and eastern Europe

Costa (founded in 1971), a subsidiary of Whitbread, has over a thousand coffee shops in Britain and 400 elsewhere.  Seeking to expand in central and eastern Europe, Costa has purchased coffeeheaven and its 90 outlets there, including 62 in Poland.  For more, see here.

Rare reprints for tea (and coffee) in Eighteenth-Century England (book)

Markham Ellis, general editor (with Richard Coulton, Ben Dew, and Matthew Manger, volume editors), Tea and the Tea-Table in Eighteenth-Century England, 4 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, forthcoming July 2010).  Despite the title, the reprints begin in the mid-seventeenth century and end in the early nineteenth century (discovery of tea plants in Assam, India, in 1823; and the dissolution of the East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade in 1833).  Volume 1: Literary Representations of Tea and the Tea-Table; volume 2: Tea in Natural History and Medical Writing; vol. 3: Tea, Commerce, and the Tea-Trade; volume 4: Tea and Politics: The Boston Tea Party (1773) and the Commutation Act (1780).  See also Markham Ellis, Eighteenth-Century Coffee House Culture, 4 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006).  Volume 1: Restoration Satire; volume 2: The Eighteenth-Century Satire; volume 3: Drama; volume 4: Science and History Writing.  For details see www.pickeringchatto.com/coffeehouse

Nine of Britain's best coffee houses

The (London) Times briefly profiles nine of Britain's best coffee houses here.  Two of them seem to be principally tea shops!

Peet's and Green Mountain compete for Diedrich over K-cups

Green Mountain invented the K-cup and the Keurig coffee maker for single cups of coffee.  It licensed various companies such as Diedrich to make the cups but now is trying to acquire these licenses in order to dominate this sector of the coffee market.  This explains the Green Mountain bidding war with Peet's for Diedrich.  For more, see here. PS: Peet's bowed out on December 7.

Coffee house nostalgia

In the Chicago Tribune Ron Grossman indulges in coffee house nostalgia.  For him a coffee house was a restaurant that served basic meals as well as coffee (refilled endlessly).  It had seats at a counter as well as tables attended by waitresses.  Many people would call it a diner.  Most such coffee houses have closed, but Grossman finally found one in today's Chicago.  He did not want a slick, assembly line contemporary coffee shop in which a wide choice of overpriced coffee probably would be served in a paper cup and the most common food had plenty of sugar and no protein.   For more, see here.  Although he doesn't make the point, he was attempting to return to an era when a choice of coffee meant black, white, or decaf and it came with a spoon.

Daily grind: New York City's unemployed at coffee shops

The New York Times reports on the unemployed at local coffee shops (where they aren't always welcome).  For details, see here.

Free workplace coffee gets weak reviews

About a third of American workplaces provide free coffee.  Only about half of coffee drinkers regard the free stuff as tolerable.  For more, see here.

Drink instant Starbucks?

Starbucks hopes to use Via to enter the $21 billion global market in instant coffee.  About 40% of all coffee drunk in the world is drunk as instant coffee.  For more, see here.

Coffeehouses in early modern Istanbul (article)

Selma Akyazici ÖZKOÇAK, "Coffeehouses: Rethinking the Public and Private in Early Modern Istanbul," Journal of Urban History 33/6 (September 2007): 965-986.

Ten reasons to switch from coffee to tea

For ten reasons to switch from coffee to tea, see here.  Tea dominates most of Asia as well as the British Isles and parts of the former British Empire as well as Russia.  Coffee dominates the Middle East, Western and Central Europe, and the Americas.  The story for Africa is more complicated.  Perhaps most interesting is that coffee (and coffee houses) appear to have become more fashionable around the world than tea (and tea shops).  Why is this happening?  Another trend worth investigating is the rise of so-called herbal teas.