The World Of Coffee

Unveiling the confusing world of coffee and what it is all about.

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What is your motivation...?

Sanette Ferreira and Lukas Beuster discuss the societal approach to coffee. Specifically looking at Stellenbosch coffee society: Societal and Locational preferences.

At first glance of this article, I immediately knew I wanted to focus in on what this article is all about. Taking the approach of viewing coffee as a topic of socialization is something that I find myself doing most often.

When I think about the basics of going to a coffee shop or any conversation I have had over a cup of coffee, you can predict the conversation will take longer than a short conversation, as you can sip on your coffee. But then that determines your location preference at whichever coffee shop it is that you choose.

Ferreira and Beuster’s approach to this article when mentioning the societal and locational preferences stunned me when looking at the “phenomenon” that has started to take over our most interesting conversations.

The motivation from this article comes from the author’s curiosity as to what should go into a coffee shop to make a coffee shop a coffee shop. Coffee shops, over time, have become “places where people would gather, speak freely and mingle with others from their community”.

From the early 80s when coffee shops were coming about in the United States to the present day, the atmosphere of coffee shops has not changed and has kept that environment where people within and outside the community can come and gather over a simple cup of coffee.

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National Coffee Day

There is a day for everything and anything, and fortunately enough, there is a National Coffee Day!

National Coffee Day falls on September 29th.

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This is the oldest coffee shop in the United States! This coffee shop opened in 1960 and is based in Saratoga Springs, New York.

The coffee shop's name comes from one half of the couple that opened Caffe Lena. Lena Nargi Spencer was reportedly "the first person to introduce espresso to Saratoga Springs".

What makes this coffee shop so significant from others is that this couple from Boston who opened this venue wanted to attract a community.

Lena's husband, Bill Spencer, focused on the entertainment side of this coffee house. They were looking to "jump on the folk music coffeehouse trend that was popular at that time".

Top performers came to this cafe to play gigs, and Lena would come up with fun names for the performers to make things more interesting. For instance, "Bob Dylan had his first weekend gig here and Lena helped other performers such as Don McLean and Arlo Guthrie, get their careers going".

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This image shows the world's largest coffee shop located in Hail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as of September 4, 2023! The name of this coffee shop is Bonchai Cafe.

This coffee shop includes a "specialized cafe project with a lounge for serving meals, a roastery, and a store that sells coffee and tea. In addition to their equipment and tools".

This building is "3,221.77 m² (34,678 ft² 121 in²) and includes 3 floors, which is 935 square meters, and an outdoor area with an area of 495 square meters, for a total area of 3,300 square meters across three floors and an outdoor space".

This accomplishment was achieved by Bonchai Catering & Co. LLC

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Did you know...

Did you know that coffee is the second most consumed beverage after water? This means that humans drink almost as much coffee as we do water.

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AI in the world of Coffee

The use of AI in today’s world is something that we see growing increasingly each day. Taking AI to the test, I looked up vague questions about coffee to view what AI’s version of the coffee world was. While most questions were answered correctly, when I looked up certain authors, such as Gavin Fridell, AI did not have the correct information listed. Gavin Fridell has several publications on the topic of coffee, but AI only listed his work in the field of trade policies and the global market.

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Fun fact: The difference between a latte, cappuccino, and macchiato is the foam-to-espresso ratio.

For a macchiato, the espresso shot goes on top of the milk shot, so it has an even ratio. For a cappuccino, there are equal parts foam, milk, and espresso, but there is more foam in a cappuccino than there is in a latte.

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Coffee prices are on the rise...

The coffee crisis is one that has been around for several decades now as the market for coffee beans changes daily. Because the coffee crisis is one that impacts many small coffee shops as well as big corporations in the coffee business such as Starbucks, I was interested to see what some news outlets had to say about this coffee crisis.

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post all tend to lean toward the left bias, but they all covered the coffee crisis differently. The article published by the New York Times titled Why Coffee Prices Are Soaring (Again) illustrates how the “extreme weather and increased global demand” has affected the rise in coffee prices. More specifically looking at  the conditions that the coffee beans need to be grown in and the “scarcity of sources leaves global coffee prices susceptible to the effects of extreme weather”.

This just shows the severity of the coffee crisis and how local coffee shops are going to struggle more to keep up with the supply of their beans. This is due to prices increasing to $7 per pound for ground coffee. The New York Times article included quotes from an associate professor who researchers’ coffee production at Rutgers University.

The Washington Post and Wallstreet Journal both published articles that are eerily similar to one another. Arabic Coffee Prices Hit New High on U.S. Colombia Tariff Spat, published by the Wall Street Journal and Why your coffee fix has gotten so pricey and it will only get worse, published by the Washington Post both mention the reasons why coffee prices has skyrocketed recently.

All three of these articles demonstrated ways in which this coffee crisis has affected everyone all over the world, but they focused more on the United States as these news outlets are directly from the United States. These articles were all posted in 2025, which makes them all relevant to the current news about this coffee crisis that we are all experiencing within the coffee industry.

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Cafe Diego: The cost of a dream

Being in the coffee growing industry is something that many coffee lovers such as myself do not think about. It does make me wonder how those with a coffee farm manage to distribute all these coffee beans throughout all different seasons and still be in business all year around. Well for Diego and his family this does not come easily.

The documentary titled Café Diego: The cost of a dream shows what Diego, and his family, have gone through during the rough times that were shown with Diego and his coffee growing business. Diego lived in Canada for a period of time but had to go back to Nicaragua in 1996, when he felt that the “lord was giving him a sign to go back to his country to continue his coffee growing business”.

This documentary really opened my eyes about the amount of effort that it takes to be a coffee producer in addition to the costs that must go into growing the coffee beans. During this time there was an active coffee crisis occurring and prices of coffee beans dropped 40 cents a pound. This was hard on the coffee growers as they were putting out more money than what was coming in.

Diego turned to his trust in the lord to help him restore his coffee growing business after the bank took the coffee farm. Diego needed to come up with the money to help him keep his business growing and had a friend come out to Nicaragua to see his farm. Unfortunately, this individual could not afford what needed to be paid for Deigo to get his farm back, but he had connections.

Paul Kurtz from Hemisphere Coffee Roasters reached out to Diego and told him he wanted to help him. Paul ended up in Nicaragua to look at Diegos coffee growing farm and wanted to see what he could do to help Diego get revenue from his farm. After months of negotiating and crunching numbers, Paul bought a whole shipping container full of Diegos coffee beans to sell in the United States.

Due to Diego having to pay workers on his farm, he needed to make enough from the sale with Paul Kurtz to pay off his debt with the bank and pay the workers. This documentary showed how dedicated Diego was to continuing his coffee-growing business and demonstrated how severe the coffee crisis was. In addition, it showed what it was worth to comfortably produce the coffee in a high-poverty country while also supporting your workers and family.

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Gavin Fridell in the industry of Coffee

Throughout the coffee industry there are many researchers that gather information about coffee or are simply interested in the tastes of coffee rather than the number side of coffee. For Gavin Fridell this is not the case. Fridell had published several books and articles on fair trade and free trade, the global coffee industry, alternative trade, etc.

After reading Fridell’s book published in 2014 titled Coffee, I gained an insight as to how he viewed the coffee industry from the global market perspective as his chapters included free trade, statecraft, and an economical approach to viewing the coffee industry.

Gavin Fridell is a Saint Mary’s University research professor in Political Science and Global Development Studies. Fridell has investigated the inequalities in global supply chains, mainly focusing on coffee and bananas. In addition to other focus areas that include topics ranging from international trade commodities to socially responsible trade policies.  

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This is the process that a coffee bean goes through before it reaches your countertop to be brewed in the morning! All the different colors represent the different stages of the coffee bean.

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Coffee By Gavin Fridell

The book Coffee, written by Gavin Fridell, relates to a current debate that has been going on since the coffee crisis in 1989. This crisis to this day is going on as the market of coffee changes daily. The price of a coffee bean changes almost daily, and this book made me realize how intense the coffee market is.

This books focus is on coffee and the statecraft that show the economic and environmental outlook of the overall topic of coffee and the coffee market within itself. Throughout the book, Fridell mentions topics ranging from making coffee to fair trade and corporate power. When reading the chapter about the global market and the statecraft, Fridell mentions how the country Burundi, with a population of 8.5 million, is the most coffee dependent country in the world.

You would think with 62% of Americans drinking coffee every morning that the United States would be more dependent on coffee or Brazil as they are known for their production of coffee. But, as Brazil is the top coffee producer in the world along with Vietnam and Colombia, this means that these countries also struggle with poverty.

Fridell mentions in his book as well the way in which the coffee market is in the poorest of areas and suffer from poverty due to the global coffee market. This is also due to the lack of “state intervention within the coffee markets to assist the poorest farms”. There are other aspects about this chapter that stood out to me and is beneficial to the research that I am doing about the topic of coffee. Fridell mentions an individual named Robert Bates who works on “the political economy of coffee and is of major importance as he draws attention to the ways in which states have shaped the internation coffee market through various forms of market regulation”.

Due to the publishing of this book being back in 2014, a lot has changed within the coffee world. In 2014, prices of coffee began to soar as there was an unanticipated drought in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producers. In 2013, when Fridell was wrapping up his research in the fall, price for coffee went down to one dollar per pound. As of March 21, 2025, the price of coffee per pound has increased to $3.90.

This information goes to show how much coffee growers can take a hit when a coffee crisis occurs. The last known coffee crisis occurred in 1989. In 2024 the world was hit with another coffee crisis and we are still a part of this crisis today as prices for coffee per pound surged 147% just in 2024.

Within Fridell’s chapter titled “coffee”, he goes into detail about how and by whom the coffee is grown. When I got to this chapter I expected it to be about the production of coffee and go more into the impact that coffee has had on the world. Instead, this chapter went further into how the coffee production began and who was involved in the coffee bean growing process. This chapter goes into the Dutch empire being the “European power to get significantly involved in coffee in the 1650s”. This then led to the expansion to Java, Sumatra, and other colonies in the South and Southeast Asia by the end of the century.

Following this chapter, it illustrates that coffee is primarily grown by local peasants, “each of whom was forced by decree to plant several hundred coffee trees on their land and sell the beans to the Dutch East India Company at very low prices”.

The chapters that mention the global market and statecraft about coffee, as well as the chapter titled “coffee,” brought a lot of information to my topic. They were also the most interesting to me because they showed me how much can change within the world of coffee in 10 years. 

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Coffee reaches peak

According to Gavin Fridell in his book Coffee, there was a "boom in specialty coffee" in the 1980s. Over one-third of the US coffee market revolves around specialty coffee, which is the single largest in the world.

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The Coffee Historian himself

Jonathan Morris is a professional historian who specializes in the history of coffee. I have the privilege of connecting with him through email, and during this exchange, he shared some information with me based on some questions that I had asked him. Morris is a research professor in the History group and a Director of the Heritage for Business unit located within the University of Hertfordshire Heritage Hub. His research began in Italy during a time that coffee bars were beginning to adapt to the culture.

Morris has authored several publications, including Coffee: A Global History, and has co-authored the History of Coffee Podcast Series. His work also includes short scripts that he has written about new discoveries with coffee. When I reached out to him, he mentioned that he originally began researching the different styles of espresso.

Within the History of Coffee Podcast Series, I stumbled upon an episode that really caught my attention. James Harper brings up the topic of the famous sitcom Friends and asks Jonathan Morris what character he connects most with. Hearing them include scenes from Friends within this podcast and mentioning the significance of the character Ross and Central Perk, the coffee shop the friends always hang out in, was something that I found to be very relatable to the world today.

Outside of the origins of coffee, I found it to be interesting how Morris “explored how tastes in coffee have changed over time yet are shaped by meanings created in the past”. When in contact with Jonathan Morris himself, he shared with me that his research began when he spent his time in coffee bars to “get to know that language and the culture”. Then, when he began working “on Italian coffee history, he concentrated on espresso as he realized how complex coffee as a subject is, and how difficult it is to understand the multiple aspects within it". This led to Morris branching out and producing Coffee: A Global History.

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Workers in the field of coffee

"Farmworkers are the engine of the coffee business". But, they are not treated fairly and are the least supported people within the industry.

"Concentrated harvests, a characteristic of the coffee industry", have to migrate for short-term labor. Many of these migrants are transported by "labor brokers". In addition, local workers can be "vulnerable to forced labor-related practices".

"Many millions of farmworkers plant, cultivate, and harvest coffee around the world, including 300 thousand people working on Rianforest Alliance Certified farms" according to the Rainforest Alliance.

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What is Hippie Culture?

Well, that's a hard question to answer and I'll explain why.

Have you ever seen those halloween "hippie" costumes? Well I'm sorry to break the news but that's not what hippie is.

Hippie culture has been around since the 60's and since then it has grown. Many people know the culture as free-spirited, drug loving, weirdos. While yes hippie culture has had its trouble with druggies not all of us in the culture go and indulge in the use of drugs.

The rise of the culture was heavily influenced by music, especially people like The Beatles and Grateful Dead. This helped started the groupie culture. An example that people may know is Beatlemania!

Hippie culture has many sub-genre's such as the classic stoner, the artist, the dread-head, the groupie, flower child, ... I am a mix of the dread-head, flower child, and the groupie. There are also so many other sub-genre's that are out there and you don't have to fall into one, and that's cool!

Now touching on the lifestyle hippies tend to live a non-traditional life. People who identify as hippies usually try to live a very nomadic lifestyle. This means that they use resources from mama Earth and try to reduce their impact as much as possible. You can see them living in vans which allow them to travel or living in communities (Communes) with other like minded individuals.

This does bring up the fact that the culture has had a past with cults. Many like minded individuals joined these groups together not knowing the horror's it may/would lead to. Most were developed on the whole "make love not war" movement.

Now moving into the more modern day. Hippie culture is still thriving today but it is not as noticeable. many of us try to find our communities wether that be going and traveling with a band (I personally follow Phish) or even just running a shop that sells holistic goods, music, or even tea blends. The most noticeable things for a modern-day hippie is the way we go about life, we give a very relaxed out look on issues. The other is fashion, if you looked up hippie you would see very flow clothes this is because we love to feel free in our clothes but still incorporate the classic hemp and linen, tie dye, and natural stones.

Photos: https://www.pinterest.com/hippiestyle_/

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It is interesting to me what hippie culture consists of and how it can tie into different personalities and resemble different meanings. Coffee was intimately tied to the counterculture of hippies.

This can be seen in coffeehouses which originally started with the hippie themes. Coffeehouses served as a general environment for hippies to gather and facilitate their social interactions and gave a sense of community. Coffee overall was seen as a social catalyst that fueled conversation during these gatherings.

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There are the bags that the unroasted coffee beans are stored in before roasting. Essentially being "raw" coffee beans.