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A Brooklyn coffee shop is offering customers a real jolt: 10 shots of espresso in a single serving with the nickname "porn in a cup." The Pulp & The Bean in the Crown Heights neighbourhood put the item on the menu Tuesday with the official name of Dieci, Italian for 10. The nickname comes from a sign advertising the drink outside the store, whose specialty item was first reported by the New York Daily News. Shop owner Tony Fisher, 37, said sales were brisk in part because "nobody's ever had the chutzpah (audacity) to do anything like this before." "This...

NEW YORK - A New York coffee shop is offering a 20-ounce beverage with 10 shots of espresso billed as "coffee porn in a cup." Tony Fisher, owner of The Pulp & The Bean, said the Dieci, named after the Italian word for 10, went on sale Tuesday after he realized the all-espresso drink had "never been done before," the New York Daily News reported Wednesday. "It just dawned on me that people really love espresso, so why not just give them a cup full of espresso?" Fisher said. "It's 20 ounces of just thunder," he said. "One giant cup...

Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted public competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General. That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general's 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted. In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators...

EVERETT -- It's a fad that's picking up steam in Snoho­mish County's hyper-competitive coffee market. Espresso drive-through stands with bikini- and lingerie-sporting baristas are popping up from Monroe to Edmonds. In the past year, at least six of these java joints employing provocatively dressed young women have opened in the county. A few owners of these roadside stands say business is so brisk, they're hiring more employees and have plans to open new locations. "I brought a touch of Vegas back to Washington," said Bill Wheeler, who opened Grab 'N' Go Espresso on Highway 99 just south of Everett last...

Since the dawn of coffee, humanity has taken few breaks in its quest for a better cup. Our inaugural coffee buzz, according to legend, came after a shepherd in Africa noticed his goats grew frisky after eating the fruit of a certain bush. Early fanatics took theirs straight, chewing whole, raw beans. Then came roasting, grinding, steeping in water, and the skinny white-chocolate half-caf Venti.

A teenager was rushed to hospital after overdosing on espresso coffee. The 17-year-old downed seven double espresso coffees while working in the family's sandwich shop and was left "burning up and hyperventilating". Student Jasmine Willis, who thought the coffees were single measures, said the effects of the espresso were so severe her actions left customers bewildered. She said she started laughing and crying for no reason while serving them, but after being sent home by her father Gary the medical symptoms started. She developed a fever at home and was unable to breathe properly. Jasmine, of Stanley, County Durham, was...

In a short, sheer, baby-doll negligee and coordinated pink panties, Candice Law is dressed to work at a drive-through espresso stand in Tukwila, and she is working it. Customers pull their trucks up to the window, where Law greets each with an affectionate nickname, blows kisses, and vamps about as she steams milk for a mocha. "You want whipped cream?" she asks, a sly smile playing on her pierced lip... "Do you like my leg warmers?" she asks. "Aren't they hot?" Hot is not the half of it. To stand apart from the hordes of drive-through espresso stands that clutter...

Warren Buffett once called the cigarette the perfect product: "It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive." Much the same could be said about coffee today. Even a costly coffee drink -- Starbucks sells its lattes for about $3.50, depending on the location -- consists of little more than a cup of water, a splash of milk, a spoonful of coffee grinds and 30 seconds of labor. Starbucks has managed to turn its customers' craving for caffeine into a $6.4 billion a year business. It already has about 6,000 company-owned coffeehouses and claims to open...

... a growing number of roasters say the Fair Trade movement has lost its way. The movement has always aroused suspicion on the right, where free traders object to its price floors and anti-globalization rhetoric. Yet critics from the left are more vocal and more angry by half; they point to unhappy farmers, duped consumers, an entrenched Fair Trade bureaucracy, and a grassroots campaign gone corporate. Stream of Conscience ... TransFair’s stated goal is simple: to ensure that farmers get a decent price for their beans, and to let consumers know it. By cutting out predatory middlemen and selling a...

Health news March 10, 2004 Cups of coffee can ward off diabetes . . .By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent DRINKING coffee can substantially reduce the risk of developing diabetes, scientists have discovered. A major study involving more than 14,000 people in Finland, which has the highest rate of coffee consumption in the world, has revealed that those who drink most have the lowest incidence of adult-onset or type 2 diabetes. When people drank three to four cups of coffee a day, their risk of developing diabetes fell by 29 per cent for women and 27 per cent for men....

City Of Seattle Initiative No. 77 Espresso Tax Yes 13147 31.71% No 28307 68.29%

Seattle Voters Says "HELL NO!" To Expresso Tax By Tim Eyman, WA State Anti-Tax Guru I'm shocked but pleased to announce that Seattle voters finally found a tax they not only disliked, but viscerally hated:  the latte tax.  It went down in flames tonight with 68% of Seattle voters, that's right SEATTLE VOTERS, not saying "no" but "HELL NO!" This is clearly a turning point on taxes in Washington state.  We've always had non-Seattle voters on board our efforts toward more tax sanity.  But now it looks as if voters in Seattle have seen the light. Better late than never....

Associated Press (Sep 17, 05:59 AM) After voters in this caffeine capital rejected a proposed 10-cent tax on espresso drinks, cafe owners celebrated with beer, wine and - what else? - lattes. With 97 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, 69 percent of voters opposed the tax. The initiative served a jolt of controversy to an otherwise sleepy off-year primary election. "You can't tax coffee. It just doesn't work," said coffee shop owner Jeff Babcock, celebrating the victory at a downtown espresso store. The measure would have taxed espresso drinks a dime per cup, with the revenue going to fund...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134642379_playboy27.html Playboy in search of willing bare-istas at Starbucks storesJust because its corporate logo is a topless mermaid, that doesn't mean Starbucks is thrilled about a Playboy callout for "Women of Starbucks." The Seattle-based coffee company was anything but abuzz following the venerable men's mag's announcement this week: "Calling all coffee-making cuties!" ... to pose nude in an upcoming issue. No one at Starbucks would comment on the matter apart from this rather terse written statement: "Starbucks Coffee Company is aware that Playboy Enterprises has issued a call for entries for a 'Women of Starbucks' section in a future...

So here I am in Seattle, America's coffee capital, and the flacks at Starbucks won't even talk to me about the measure on Berkeley's November ballot that would require coffeehouses to sell only Fair Trade, organic or shade-grown coffee. (Fair Trade means the importers paid growers at least $1.26 cents per pound for coffee beans. Shade-grown coffee, the measure explains, "is planted in a shaded, forest-like setting created by a canopy of trees," which provides habitat for native songbirds.) Violators would be subject to a $100 fine, six months behind steel bars or both. Tully's and Seattle's Best Coffee...

It's a tax that could hit Seattleites where it really hurts: their coffee mugs. A group of child-care advocates, seeking more money for early education, filed an initiative Friday that would place a 10-cent city tax on Seattle's lifeblood -- espresso drinks. But in Seattle, where voters have already voted to tax their tobacco, their meals and their hotel rooms, among other things, initial word of the proposal caused barely a jolt among the area's latte lovers. "Coffee, in a way, it's kind of a luxury item," said Patty Grazini, who frequents the Diva Espresso Bar in Seattle's Greenwood district....