Coffee Break

Flavia coffee helps offices go green

I love pretty shiny things. I love things that are better for the environment. I love friendly people. And I love coffee. When you put all of those together, you’ve got a win-win-win situation that is guaranteed to get my attention. That’s why the very nice letter I got from a PR rep at Mars Drinks caught my attention this morning.

See, Mars Drinks makes the coffee that’s used in the Flavia single serve coffee machine. I first ran into the Flavia at my kids’ dentist’s office almost ten years ago. This was long before I ever heard of Senseo or Keurig. In fact, the Flavia was the first single serve coffee system that I ever saw. And since it was a shiny new thing that had to do with making coffee, I had to try it.

It was pretty cool to be able to have a cup of gourmet flavored coffee whenever I took the kids to the dentist. Even better - my son fell in love with the machine, which meant that he was making coffee for everyone in the waiting room instead of climbing the walls and slipping unnoticed out the door into traffic. I loved the Flavia office coffee maker and wondered how much it would cost to buy one for my kitchen.

Alas, it was not to be. Flavia concentrates on office coffee service rather than the home market, so I tend to leave them out of the reckoning when I’m pulling up things to write about. Which isn’t quite fair, since Flavia does make a couple of small single serve coffee brewers for the home kitchen - and I do know that some people out there are trying to figure out how to make better coffee at the office - without over-running the budget.

So, when I checked the mail this morning and found a note from Andrea at Flavia, I figured I’d share it. Here’s the scoop:

In today’s world, companies are doing all they can to try to go green. Mars Drinks recently launched a sustainability initiative for FLAVIA, its line of single serve hot beverages that are made specifically for the workplace.  The first step was having three of its most popular beverages (House Blend, Breakfast Blend and Kona Blend) certified by the Rainforest Alliance.

Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee is grown on farms where forests are protected, rivers, soils and wildlife are conserved and workers are treated with respect, paid decent wages, properly equipped and given access to education and medical care.

However Mars doesn’t stop there, it’s also working to green other aspects of the Flavia workplace experience by offering:

• Cups that use 10% post-consumer recycled materials
• The packs, which hold the fresh ground coffee and tea leaves, are now 20% smaller, leading to decreased waste
• The merchandiser, which displays the packs in offices, is made from 90% post-consumer recycled content
• The rail, a piece of hard material that the packs are stored in, is made from fully recyclable material.

So if you’re considering an office coffee solution, do take the time to check out the Flavia and the thirty kinds of coffee, espresso, chocolate and tea that they offer in Flavia packs for your office.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR on the exchange) announced yesterday that they were selling off 4 million shares of common stock in the company. I’ve been talking about Green Mountain stocks for the past several months - the company has been reporting higher earnings quarter after quarter in an economic climate that has most others tightening their purse strings to deal with falling revenues.

While other companies have been cutting costs and hunkering in for a long, cold economic winter, Green Mountain Coffee opened a new packaging plant and roasting facility in Tennesee, and bought the Tully’s plant in Seattle. The expansion of operations means that the company needs to expand IT, HR, admin, payroll services - all the parts of the company that have to absorb the addition of new staff and facilities. The 4 million shares of stock - with stock currently selling at about $68 a share - will raise almost $300 million that will go to pay down debt and cover the expansion of general operations.

While 4 million shares of stock may sound like a lot to you, me and most unsophisticated stock watchers, it’s actually a relatively small percentage of the stock that GMCR could put out there. The result of the announcement yesterday was a drop of about 4% in the price of Green Mountain coffee stocks on the market. If the new stock announcement prompts a sell-off and drives the price of Green Mountain stocks down further, it could be a great time to buy Green Mountain Coffee - stocks, that is. The company is on solid ground, reporting a 169% increase in revenues last quarter.

The company dominates the single serve coffee maker market the way Mr. Coffee dominated the automatic coffee maker market in the early 70s. Unlike Mr. Coffee, though, Green Mountain has managed to capitalize itself by hitting the coffee market on as many fronts as possible - coffee makers, k-cups, their own coffee, licensing the use of k-cups to other big coffee names, exclusive deals with major retailers and coffee shops, a coffee club for direct subscription sales… in short, GMCR looks like its in for a long, long successful run.

From the Guardian’s Data Blog page comes this scary question: Can a coffee have as many calories as a Big Mac? Can I just say  - well, duh?

According to figures compiled by World Cancer Research, a lot of those yummy coffee frappe drinks that people adore (watch Morning Joe sometime to see what Joe Scarborough considers “coffee”) are seriously bad for you. The report has some great ammunition for Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe, who often rags on her cast-mate about his sugary, whipped-cream laced drink and how bad it is for him. According to the chart found at the Guardian, a Venti Dark Berry Mocha Frappuccino blended coffee with whipped cream has a whopping 561 calories - topping Big Mac’s 495 calories by almost 20%.

Note however, that a Starbucks iced black coffee - even a Venti - has 5 calories. And coffee - at least caffeinated coffee - gives your body an adrenaline-laced metabolism boost. Your body actually burns more calories for the same activities after drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee.

Of course, you do sort of negate that effect when you add things to your coffee like cream, milk, sugar, whipped cream, heavy syrups and the like. You should also keep in mind that when you drink coffee, the caffeine tends to encourage dehydration, in part because of that same metabolism boost. And I can attest to this personally. A while back, I started making a point of drinking a glass of ice water for every cup of coffee that I drank. The difference in my skin was incredible - I hadn’t realized how dry and delicate it was until I started properly hydrating my body. Within just a few days, my skin was younger, firmer and definitely more healthy.

The bottom line is this: coffee offers a lot of health benefits, but common sense is important here, too. When the studies suggest that 5 cups of coffee a day (and remember that those are 6 ounce cups) seem to be good for you, they’re not talking about 5 coffee milkshakes. Indulge once in a while if you want, but keep the junk out of your coffee - and remember that you also need to be aware of the other effects that coffee has on your body.

Is your coffee drive-thru habit becoming an endangered species? The National Highway Safety and Trade Administration has released their list of the top ten foods to avoid while driving - and coffee tops the list of dangerous driving food habits. The list was reported in Motor Trends last week, and the motoring mag made special note of coffee’s place at the top of the driving food no-nos list.

In fact, the article made it sound like it was a no-brainer that you should avoid drinking coffee while driving - which could be a surprise to places like Dunkin Donuts which sells millions of cups of coffee at drive-thru windows every morning.

The issue, of course, is that coffee is HOT, and coffee cups are not infallible. A splash of hot coffee on the back of your hand, or a lapful of scaling coffee is certainly enough to distract you from the road. All it takes is hitting a bump at the wrong time, and you could end up swerving unexpectedly. So what’s the solution? Here’s a few random thoughts to make your coffee on the go habit safer.

1. Black coffee is obviously hotter than coffee with milk or cream. Drink your coffee with cream!
2. Make sure that the cover of your coffee cup fits right and is securely on the cup.
3. Get your to-go coffee in your own travel mug instead of in a takeaway cup - it’s better for the environment, too. Just be sure that you wash it out before handing it over. Many drive-thrus have a policy of only refilling clean travel mugs.
4. Only sip when you’re at a standstill - red lights, stop signs, etc. Much less chance of hitting a bump and spilling when you’re not moving.

Got other travel coffee tips? I’d love to hear them!

So Jared and I didn’t win the Eight O’Clock Coffee Discover the Difference contest, but someone will - and you can help decide who gets the $10,000 giveaway or year of free 8 O’Clock coffee. You can even take a spin of the wheel and try to win one of the Discover the Difference prizes yourself. Just hop on over to Eight O’Clock Coffee Discover the Difference and spin the wheel to win one of 150 prizes, including $2,500, gift certificates to Bed & Bath and free coffee for a year.

After that, click on Gallery to check out the eight finalists for the $10,000 prize in the Discover the Difference contest. Be warned that it’s not an easy choice - all of the entries are for great causes. They range from Sebastien, a handsome pit bull, who would contribute the $10,000 to a rescue pet shelter, to Miss Edna’s friends, who would use the $10,000 to establish an organization to encourage intergenerational friendships between seniors and at-risk youth. On a more personal note, you could vote to help a woman fund her sister’s dream of expanding her cake baking business, vote to give the money to a young family to help them meet the expenses of baby’s first year, or to fund a family reunion.

I won’t tell you who I voted for - just go vote and help someone’s dream come true!

Update on the Gr8 Taste coffee mugs: I managed to order a second one, but when I went to enter my coffee codes for this month’s coffee purchase I was in for a disappointment. The coffee mugs are currently out of stock. Bah. On the plus side, it means that I’m two bags of coffee away from earning a $25 Visa gift card that I can use for -anything-.

Credit: woodsy@stock.xchang

It’s another gorgeous summer Sunday morning here and I’m enjoying my morning coffee out on the patio and sifting through the newspaper to see what’s up and what’s new in the coffee world.

Over at Mike’s coffee blog, there’s a lot of talk about the coffee wars, for which he provides frequent updates. Well, up in New York, the coffee wars have a new entrant - new to New York, if not to the coffee world. Tomorrow morning, Tim Horton’s will be opening 13 stores in NYC, located in 13 former Dunkin Donuts locations. If you’re in NYC, you can help Tim celebrate by dropping by for a free Tim Horton’s coffee at the new Penn Stations location.

Course, it could be rough going for coffee shops in NYC. One well-known Brooklyn coffee shop, Vox Pop, is looking for a new Lady Liberty to replace an 8 foot tall fiberglass Statue of Liberty that used to stand on the sidewalk out front. The statue was stolen in June, and used in an amateur “terrorist video”.  If you happen to have an 8 foot tall fiberglass Lady Liberty hanging around, I’ll be Vox Pop will be happy to take it off your hands.

Down in NOLA, customs agents found that some of the Colombian coffee being shipped through their border had a little bit of extra kick. X-rays of the shipping containers showed “squarish shapes” in among the burlap coffee bean bags. Turns out the squarish shapes were duffel bags full of cocaine - just under 1,000 pounds of it. Now that’s putting some serious octane in your morning cup!

And speaking of free coffee, check your local Mickey Ds to find out if they’re participating in the Mocha Monday giveaways. McDonalds is giving away free sample size iced or hot mocha on Mondays from July 13 - that’s tomorrow - through August 3. Not all McD’s are participating, but there are participating stores across the country. The chain figures that they’ll give away about 10 million cups of mocha over the course of the 4 Mondays.

And sad news for our UK friends - Brit chain coffee shop Coffee Republic is shutting down 10 of its 19 UK locations in preparation for selling off the company. As someone who has watched too many favorite coffee shops close down over the years, Coffee Republic fans have my condolences. It’s never easy to lose a friendly coffee shop.

And to end on a high note - more free coffee! Barnes & Noble have introduced a new iPhone app - and it comes with a free coffee. Well, it doesn’t actually -deliver- the free coffee. You have to take your iPhone to a B&N with a coffee shop and show it to the barista. You’ll get a one-time only free cup of coffee for downloading the B&N iPhone app - each app download has a one-use coffee coupon code. The app lets you share book recommendations and learn about new releases, etc etc etc.

And with that, my coffee is gone and it’s time for me to get to weeding the garden - course, the way the weeds are running this year, I’d do better to just let them take over and figure out a way to use them!

Dunkin Does Tech Right

While Starbucks turned to technology to “improve” their brewed coffee by installing $10,000 Clover 1 coffee machines in some of their stores last year, Dunkin Donuts is putting tech know-how where it matters to their customers - making it easy to do a Dunkin Run.

If you’ve ever been the guy or gal on the run end of the Dunkin Run, you know what it’s like trying to keep all the orders straight. Large French Vanilla with one sugar? Iced with skim and 3 Equals? A double turbo iced plain with half a sugar and extra cream and a… gah! Even if you’re only picking up three coffees at Dunkin’s who can keep it all together?

Well now, thanks to Dunkins embrace of technology, you don’t HAVE to. All you have to do is aim your browser at www.dunkinrun.com and follow the simple onscreen instructions. Basically, it goes like this:

You enter the cell numbers or email addresses of your friends/coworkers who are ordering coffee.

You choose what you want from the menu and hit enter.

You have just volunteered to make a Dunkin Run and sent out mail asking all of your friends to place their orders. In a few minutes, you can print out your order list straight from your computer, or access it on your iPhone.

Head out to the nearest Dunkins - if you’re not sure where it is, there’s a Store Locator right on dunkinrun.com - and when you get there, just hand the list over the counter (if you printed it out) or read it off your iPhone (if you didn’t).

Yeah, you could do it with a slip of paper and a pen, but hey - it’s more fun this way. And really, what did you get that iPhone for if not for this?

It’s Only the Good Friday again and I have another good coffee pick. This one is good for a lot of reasons…

When you first hit the web site at Marley Coffee , you’re greeted by the unmistakably uplifting strains of Bob Marley - and there’s a good reason for that. The coffee company is owned by Marley’s son, Rohan Marley, and his friend Shane Whittle, and is the fulfillment of Marley’s dream to return to his home and grow coffee on his family farm. Who knew that Marley was a coffee farmer?

Marley Coffee sells five coffees, including my favorite Ethiopian Yrgacheffe which I’ll defnitely be ordering for myself. When I do, I promise a review. It sounds absolutely lovely, and I can’t wait to try it. The other coffees include Lively Up, Simmer Down, Mystic Morning and Jammin’ Java. The Ethiopian, One Love, is a single origin coffee. The others are all blended coffees with coffees from Indonesia, South America, Africa, Central America and Jamaica. All the coffees are organically grown without pesticides or herbicides, and, according to Marley, ethically traded. In addition, Marley Coffee has established the Marley Coffee Foundation which uses part of the proceeds to support soccer opportunities for young children in Jamaica.

Marley Coffee will also be the first certified organic coffee farm in Jamaica, Marley says. Want to know more about Marley Coffee and the organic movement? Watch: