I just read an article on JSOnline that successfully managed to blow out a couple of bricks from the sturdy wall I have carefully built against sentimentality and flood my mind with a rush of childhood memories. The last of the real department store restaurants in the Milwaukee area, The Cream City Café at the Southridge Boston Store, will shut its doors for the final time on Monday, March 4.



When I was but a wee lass, my Mother and Grandmother used to take me and my siblings to… Continue

The folks at Gawker media blog, the most prolific purveyor of snark on the web, were treated to a special email from a Starbucks employee, laying out exactly what happened during the company's three hour "retraining session".



Apparently, it was not so much educational as boooooring.



There's also a link to a previous post about the positively gushing analysis of "Starbucks Robots"--Gawker's words, not mine--on the Starbucks Gossip blog.…



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NPR's Morning Edition reported today that average Starbucks customers doubt that yesterday's massive barista retraining session will make a difference in the megacorp's coffee drink quality. And, they added, they couldn't care less. (Okay, those weren't their exact words but it was implied.)



Customers interviewed in Bellevue, Washington said they didn't expect much to come from the barista retraining that closed all 7,100 of the US company-operated stores for a span of three… Continue

The newest additions to the Francis Francis X-series home espresso machines, the X7 and X8, are set to debut this spring and java hipsters 'round the globe are trying their level best not to scream like little girls at a Beatles concert as they wait for their first look.



Designed by Milan architect Luca Trazzi, the series' first machine, the X1, was released in 1995, sending shock waves through the coffee enthusiast community. Sleek, sharp and oh so pretty, it was a huge hit among… Continue

Those crazy sci-fi kids over at the io9 blog have uncovered a future of pure, unadulterated horror: a world where humans will bow down to the coffee profiling dictates of the machine known simply as the Electronic Taster.



Indeed, friends, this is the end of coffee enjoyment as we know it--an end that could only have been designed by those nutty engineers at Nestle, who, mad with power, continue on in their quest to conquer the world through taste bud desensitization. Run for your… Continue

Costa Coffee, one of the largest roasters, wholesalers and retailers in the United Kingdom, opened a new café in Aberystwyth, Wales yesterday and managed to do it in the worst possible way. With your indulgence, I'd like to offer up a brief rant of just where this company went wrong.



Mistake #1: Opening the café on high street without planning permission from the Ceredigion County Council.



Mistake #2: Ignoring a letter from Aberystwyth Town Council requesting that they… Continue

News arrived yesterday that the CIA has formed a partnership with Counter Culture. Reaction around the world has been a swift and resounding "What?!" And yet it is true. The implications of this unusual partnership bring up many troubling questions, paramount among them is how...



Okay, I just can't go on with this farce any longer. Not that it can't be done, mind you, but there are simply too many possible jokes embedded within this news item for any sane person to willingly go… Continue

A day of reckoning approaches, friends, for on February 26, 2008, between the hours of 5:30PM and 8:30PM local time, the billion dollar global retail coffee monolith known as Starbucks will close all 7,100 US company-operated stores to train--or, as they call it, retrain--their employees in the elusive art of pulling espresso shots. Well, my word, this is news!



Questions most definitely arise in the wake of this announcement. Is this decision to close for a whole three hours an… Continue

So yesterday I blogged about Oliver Jeffers' use of coffee rings in his illustrative art, which can be viewed on his web site. Ingenious! After being so inspired, I decided to take a look around the ole Internets to find some more and viola! I happily ran across the site of Andrew Saur and Angel Sarkela-Saur. These two have some amazing talent, and I'm not joshin' ya, people.



Andrew and Angel create paintings entirely in the medium of… Continue

Dallas Business Journal is reporting that Starbucks has made a deal with AT&T to offer free Wi-Fi at their stores to all AT&T broadband, U-verse and remote access service business Internet customers. In addition, Starbucks card holders can get two hours of free Wi-Fi per day at participating locations beginning this spring.



Meanwhile, the poor saps who decline a Starbucks card and exercise their consumer choice by using a provider other than AT&T will have to pay… Continue

Oliver Jeffers has some incredible illustrations using coffee rings up on his web site. Both my husband and I have doodled in and around coffee stains, so this really brightened up my day.



Go to Jeffers’ site and find them under his Illustration section. (via Drawn!)



Post originally published by Milwaukee… Continue

OnMilwaukee.com recently published an article entitled "How long is too long? Local cafes have unwritten rules."

Penned by staff writer Molly Snyder Edler, the piece addresses the

issue of patrons camping out in coffeehouses. Though this is an

extremely old debate, going as far back as the very birth of

restaurants and cafés--so, what would that be... something like the

15th… Continue