Italian coffee maker Illy Caffe will challenge Starbucks Corp’s stronghold over the US out-of-home coffee market by expanding its reach within independent coffee shops, rather than opening up its own.

Over the past year we’ve noticed experimentation in Starbucks’ marketing, a reflection of an identity crisis in the industry as “mass-market powerhouses” McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts use the recession to rise from below. On the opposite front gourmet coffee startups are beginning to present the premium quality Starbucks once used as its primary selling point.

La Colombe Torrefaction recently opened their second cafe in New York after a successful opening in Tribeca. The cafe and the company behind it has a long and traveled history in coffee.

PSFK got in touch with Liz Muller who is Director of Global Concept Design and interviewed her on the phone about the 15th Avenue E concept store they had rolled out in Seattle, the reasons behind it and the company’s plans for the future.

Last Friday, the Seattle based corporation opened their first ’stealth store’ called 15th Avenue E Coffee and Tea – a cafe “inspired by Starbucks”. Our PSFK spy got herself down to the store opening and snapped some of these photos.

While it’s popular cousin the soybean may hog most of the spotlight, the multi-purposefulness of the coffee ground is nothing to scoff at. In addition to providing us with a refreshing beverage, and occasionally biofuel, a company in Taiwan has recently turned our caffeinated friend into a “super high-tech eco fabric.” The process, which was created by Singtex Industrial Co. and took three years to perfect, is boasted to produce two shirts from the amount of coffee grounds needed to make “one medium cup of coffee”. The fabric is also rumored to be “quick-drying, odor controlling,  and uv-protective.”
To give the [...]

Students at the Shenkar Academy of Design in Tel Aviv were directed to scrutinize and reexamine the ways in which coffee and tea drinkers interact with their beverage, in terms of materials, taste, and ritual. The results are visually arresting and for the most part functional, and without a doubt a thoughtful, refreshing step beyond the mug and teaspoon. Below are some of our favorites from the project.

The ‘Audrey’ espresso cup comes with an extension to store a companion spoon that can also function as a finger grip for a diminutive shot.

The ‘Cubis’  mug’s angled shape allows a set of [...]

Gus* Design has created a simple, but useful piece of furniture constructed out of surplus jute bags that were once used to transport organic coffee beans. Each Upcycle Ottoman is also custom screen-printed with logos from the different types of coffee, making every one unique.

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Last Wednesday was National Beverage Day, a little-known holiday that inspired us to examine the new McCafé coffee line, from McDonalds.
Perhaps an unlikely chain vying for a piece of the caffeinated pie, but with this week’s launch, McDonald’s introduced an expanded McCafé coffee line, featuring cappuccinos, mochas and lattes. The specialty offerings are available at 11,000 locations (out of 14,000) nationwide. And taking a page from the coffeehouse playbook, McDonald’s customers can customize any drink with flavored syrups, steamed milk or whipped cream.
While Starbucks battles the stigma of the recession-unfriendly “4 dollar coffee,” a coffee run at McDonald’s will set [...]

During an interview with FOX News that took place in August, GoGORILLA Media CEO Alan Wolan said, “Just because you can put an ad somewhere, doesn’t mean you should,” so why is he attempting to co-opt the foam atop our cappuccinos and lattes? This newest invasion, neatly packaged as a guerilla marketing innovation, is called CoffeeMedia, a way for advertisers to have their catchy slogans tapped out in chocolate-y powder and broadcast to an unsuspecting audience – in this case customers enjoying the relative solace of a quiet cafe.
The very reason that non-traditional marketing is effective – it places ads in [...]

In reaction an previous piece in the Financial Times about the decline of Starbucks Thurston says that we should remember that Starbucks created a market for high quality coffee retail (to compete against perceived average quality of the Seattle brand’s beverages). He also points out that the tastebud awakening that Starbucks encouraged also drove the popularity of home brewing…

New cities, bigger meet-ups, this Friday morning in New York, San Francisco, London, Seattle, Copenhagen, Boston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Minneapolis, Malmö, Ancona, Orlando, Jakarta, Hamburg, Stockholm, Amsterdam!