A third Starbucks will open in downtown Portland, Maine in the next few weeks, according to Bangor Daily News, but area coffee shops seem pretty okay with the whole situation. Maybe it’s because, according to this Slate article, proliferation of Starbucks is actually good for business. Maybe it’s because the scene there is already thriving with quality cafes, the threat of the Mocha Frappuccino is lost in the excitement of a latte art throw down. Here’s what some folks had to say:

“I wouldn’t worry about a Starbucks affecting places like this. They’re apples and oranges…Starbucks will always have their customers, I guess. But I don’t see how a chain like that will make that much difference.”

A couple blocks away, at Coffee By Design, a coffee house at 67 India St., shift supervisor Croix Galipault shared that view.

“There’s more nuance and niche to it than just having another coffee shop nearby,” he said, noting that Coffee By Design and Crema are both successful despite being so close to each other.

“We’re both here, and we’re both doing well,” he said.

And thus continues the intriguing development of Portland, Maine’s evidently teeming, definitely out-of-the-way, and very intriguing specialty coffee scene. We covered the growth and development of Tandem Coffee Roasters last August, as part of our Build Outs of Summer series. Now on our list of cafes to visit in Portland, Maine: The Speckled Ax, Crema Coffee Co., Coffee By Design, the aforementioned Tandem Coffee Roasters, Bard Coffee, and maybe the new Starbucks if we need to do a pre-flight mocha. (J/K) (Not really J/K)

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The owner of Bikinii, a month-old cafe and drive-thru kiosk in Riviera Beach (that is definitely spelled that way), has contacted the Broward Long Beach Times with the following statement:

Ray Webber had a dream. And that dream was to open a drive-thru kiosk staffed by women in patriotic bikinis serving coffee and food stuffs. Clean Plate Charlie, you know, that blog, has more:

Webber is a general contractor who opened Bikinii Coffee after hearing about the Twin Peaks coffee truck in Denver, Colorado, which features servers in swim suits.

Bikinii Coffee was the first of a new group of “breastaurants” scheduled to open in south Florida. The Tilted Kilt, which features “kilt girls” dressed as naughty prep school girls and Twin Peaks, starring the Lumber Jills, are both slated to open in Broward County.

But now Ray Webber’s dream is dead.

What happens to an exploitative, misogynistic, sign-of-end-times dream deferred? Does it dry up, like a perverted raisin in the sun? Only time will tell.

The post Stars And Strips? Patriotic Bikini Barista Stand Closes In Florida appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Turns out not everyone is a McDreamy fan: Starbucks is fighting back hard against actor Patrick Dempsey’s bid to buy the beleagured Seattle-based coffee company Tully’s. Starbucks wants to buy the chain and turn its cafe locations in Starbucks, in what amounts to a kind of scorched earth, smite-thy-enemies “Game of Thrones”-esque end game for the two longtime rivals. McDreamy wants to keep Tully’s chugging along, serving coffee roasted by Green Mountain and allowing for longime patrons to, you know, redeem their gift cards and stuff.

The Wall Street Journal is all over it:

Losers at the bankruptcy auction for the Tully’s coffee shops are asking the court to reject the winning $9.1 million bid from actor Patrick Dempsey, arguing that the “Grey’s Anatomy” star whom Hollywood calls “McDreamy” unfairly charmed auctioneers to win the 47-location chain without putting in the highest bid.

Anyone who’s ever looked into his eyes would understand.

The Seattle Times has gone bango-bonzo bananas with excitement over the possibility of McDreamy calling the “shots” for Tully’s 17 Washington State locations. From an official SeaTimes board editorial earlier this week:

Tully’s was almost killed in the recession. Since October it has been reorganizing under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy laws, and its assets are on the block. It’s good news that the committee of management and creditors chose the bid by Global Baristas, and even better news if the federal bankruptcy judge approves it.

Global Baristas’ $9 million bid was for all of Tully’s, with the intention of running it as an independent company. That implies preserving jobs, competition and consumer choice.

Their endorsement also implies more photo ops like these, wherein Mr. Dempsey gets flirty with some Tully’s baristas.

By far the best coverage of the Tully’s / McDreamy / Starbucks love den comes from Seattle Times business reporter Melissa Allison. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonSeattle for the minutiae as it unfolds, including live tweets from today’s court room drama!

The post Tully’s Follies: Starbucks Strikes Back, or What Becomes Of A McDreamy Deferred? appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Dateline: Seattle, “The City That’s More Blue Collar Than You Think.” It seems the fine folk’um at Baristas Coffee Company Inc. (BCCI) have placed a bid to acquire poor, bedraggled Tully’s, once a titan amongst Starbucks impersonators, now having fallen on bad times. It’s a move that has a lot of people buzzing! “Baristas said Tuesday it will bid through a new entity, Baristas Acquisition Partners,” the Seattle Times reports, “that includes several current Tully’s shareholders and other investors. None of them were identified.”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Baristas currently owns a number of drive-up kiosks in the greater Seattle area. They plan to continue operating Tully’s shops under the Tully’s name. The Tully’s roasting/packaging business is not apart of the deal, which was sold to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in 2009. More from the Seattle Times:

James Day, an attorney for Tully’s, questioned at a bankruptcy court hearing Friday whether Baristas could make a viable offer. He said the financial statement of Baristas, which trades publicly over the counter, “doesn’t look really strong.”

For the quarter ended June 30, Baristas reported total revenue of $357,000 and net income of $110,000. It had cash and equivalents of $16,000 and total assets of $865,000.

Baristas Coffee Company currently has a wildly popular Youtube channel and made waves earlier this year when they successfully trademarked the word “Baristas.” Stay tuned to Sprudge.com for more on the Tully’s buy-out; we’ll keep you abreast of the matter.

The post Tully’s Follies: Bikini Barista Barons Bid On Bankrupt Business appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Kang Xiaxiao of the Morning Whistle reports that “Nestle provided a purchase price of 17.9 yuan per kilo for coffee beans produced in Yunnan over the 2012 to 2013 purchasing season on Nov. 20, which is the lowest bid in the past five years.” That’s about $1.30 a pound, which according to Xiaxiao, “is very close to the break-even point for coffee farmers, estimated at about 15 to 16 yuan per kilo.”

Though the price will float in the following months according to the price offered on the New York coffee futures trading market, local coffee planters have begun worrying about their future.

Yunnan is the largest coffee producer in China, where the annual output is about 26,000 tons, accounting for 90 percent of the total coffee production in China. Despite the decreasing purchasing price, the planted area in Yunnan Province is expanding.

Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke (File Photo)

For a little background on coffee production in Yunnan, we turn now to an Economist write-up from earlier this year:

Nestlé, along with the Chinese government and the United Nations Development Programme, helped jump-start coffee production in the area in the late 1980s. Yunnan’s first coffee growers, 19th-century European missionaries, found a suitable climate for their bitter juice, but little native interest in drinking it. Now Yunnan accounts for almost all the coffee grown in China. Other buyers have followed Nestlé in recent years, and demand has outstripped supply. Beans are sold at the global price, which last year briefly topped 40 yuan ($6.30) a kilo, and is now about 30 yuan. Three years ago, the price was only 16 yuan a kilo.

An industry analyst told Sprudge.com, “Some would argue that a company like Nescafe owes it to their shareholders to buy their raw material as cheaply as possible.” One could also argue that a parent company like Nestle owes it to their shareholders to use Penelope Cruz in their latest ad campaign for Nespresso:

You don’t wanna know what they paid Clooney. (Of course you do.)

The post Yunnan: Coffee Crisis As Nescafe Bid Hits Five Year Low appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Will Trung Nguyen be bigger than Starbucks? Dang Le Nguyen Vu, Vietnam’s “Coffee King”, is aiming for a robust(a) global expansion of his Vietnam-based coffee brand. And he’s not afraid to bird dog and mean mug on Starbucks while he works to reach that goal. Via Reuters:

“Our ambition is to become a global brand,” the chairman of privately-owned Trung Nguyen told Reuters.

“They are great at implanting a story in consumers’ minds but if we look into the core elements of Starbucks, what they are doing is terrible. They are not selling coffee, they are selling coffee-flavored water with sugar in it,” he said.

Trung Nguyen also runs Vietnam’s biggest chain of coffee houses, and Vu has his pitch ready for the Western market.

“American consumers don’t need another product. They need another story,” he said, adding that his company aimed to improve the lives of people in Vietnam’s coffee-growing highland region, a link he sees lacking in larger rivals.

“They sing great songs about sustainable development but at the end of the day, the return on investment is what they care about. They don’t grow coffee, do they? We do.“

Wethinks the King has a myopic purview, because Starbucks is totes developing new coffee growing regions in China for their own shnizz. But still, it’s a battle of the kings! Schultz v. Dang Le Nguyen Vu, and not just in a court of law, but in the squared circle, facing off, no holds barred, battle royale, Hell in the Cell, all flying hammerlocks and aerial moves (Nguyen) and piledrivers coupled with the dreaded submission suplex (Schultz). Who will win?

Should Starbucks prepare for war in Vietnam, or will Schultz let Saigons be Saigons? Can Nguyen win the hearts and grinds of his greatest pho? Glegh!

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After considerable success shaming (originally covered by Sprudge here), the folks at Costa Coffee will not opening up shop in the British quirk capital of Totnes. The city council was totes cool with it, but the city folk themselves were totes against it and Costa decided it didn’t want to draw swords with the Totnes townies. More from Auntie Beeb:

South Hams District Council had approved plans by Costa Coffee to open in Fore Street, Totnes.

But in a letter, Chris Rogers, managing director of Costa, said the company had “recognised the strength of feeling” against national brands in the town.

Costa Coffee locations, via Hospitality and Catering News.

The anti-Costa movement is predictably delighted over at the official “No To Costa” blog:

We are absolutely delighted to hear from Costa Coffee’s Managing Director, Chris Rogers, of their decision to withdraw from Totnes. We are impressed Costa has taken the time to understand our town, its economy and the 5,700 people who signed the petition asking Costa to reconsider.

This is a major milestone for local communities and is a day when the value of localism comes into its own, albeit belatedly… Unfortunately, we’re now left with a situation where planning has been granted for change of use. We’d encourage South Hams District Council to learn the lesson that Costa Coffee has had to correct. If localism means communities have the right to decide what happens in their towns, its time for planners to understand this as well.

Totnes anti-Costa ticker tape parade.

Do you think Costagate was a win for independent shops worldwide? Do you think Costa should have been able to open shop? Sound off in the comments below!

The post Update: Costa Coffee Totes Not Opening In Totnes appeared first on Sprudge.com.

A few days ago, pioneering media gossip rag TechCrunch (founded in the early 2000s, sold to AOL in 2010 for $25 million) broke the story that Blue Bottle Coffee had “raised close to 20 million” thanks to investment from the adventure capitalists at True Ventures and Index Ventures. Here’s the SEC filing form for you to go over with your lawyer friend – it basically says that a fellow named Bryan Meehan is now the president and CEO of Blue Bottle, as part of a group of investors who now own a controlling stake in the company.

Oliver Strand calls Mr. Meehan.

Drama, right? Only sort of. Oliver Strand, whose business reporting is the journalistic equivalent of a sure-footed billy goat, breaks down the deets over on the NYT Diner’s Journal:

Mr. Meehan is the Dublin-born entrepreneur behind Fresh & Wild, a London chain of organic markets sold to Whole Foods in 2004, and Nude Skincare, a line of natural beauty products. He now lives in Marin County, Calif., and the Blue Bottle Coffee investment group he leads draws from the Bay Area’s high-tech executives. It includes Tony Conrad, a founding member of True Ventures and the founder of About.com; Kevin Systrom, the co-founder and chief executive of Instagram; Kevin Rose, a general partner at Google Ventures and the founder of Digg; and Mike Volpi, a partner in Index Ventures, formerly of Cisco Systems.

Reached on the phone in Dublin, Mr. Meehan said that James Freeman, the founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, would continue to occupy a central position in the company. “James promised to me that he’s going to spend the rest of his life growing his business,” Mr. Meehan said. “He’s the founder, and he’s still running things. My role will be chairman of the board.”

Mr. Strand goes on to quote James Freeman as saying “I’m still going to make decisions about where or if we open new shops, what the new shops look like, what the new shops feel like.” Which is kind of all that matters, right?

It’s one thing to say, “Hey, I’m selling the shop and moving to Timbuktu.” That’s not what James Freeman is doing. Wouldn’t it be super cool to build up your own small business from scratch, a small business that you’d put literally your entire life and soul and blood and sweat and brain into, and then be able to turn around and say, “Yes, please, $20,000,000 sounds fine, and I’ll keep running it and making it awesome just like before” - doesn’t that sound super cool? That’s pretty much what James Freeman got to do last week. We’d do it in a freaking heartbeat, and you probably would, too.

The scene inside the Wall Street Journal newsroom, “Finally! A frothy new deal!”

This breaking news was covered by The Wall Street Journal, who dubbed the transaction “a frothy new deal” and quoted True Ventures investor Tony Conrad as calling Blue Bottle “the Apple of coffee.” WSJ treats Blue Bottle’s partial sale as part of an ongoing trend, in which “tech cash pours into food start-ups,” or something. Last, Blue Bottle’s sale was posted about around an hour ago by Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine, in a feature that largely just paraphrased Mr. Strand’s piece.

So if you’re lucky enough to write about coffee, business, or the coffee business for a living, the last 36 hours have been a real bumpercrop of Blue Bottle sale news, for which we can all proudly file and invoice. Winner in the Blue Bottle Sale Journalism Sweepstakes goes to Oliver Strand, for actually picking up the phone and calling Mr. Freeman, Mr. Meehan, and other involved parties for his feature. Loser in the Blue Bottle Sale Journalism sweepstakes goes to Sprudge, for being jet-lagged and sick and felled by our schedules, and thus unable to, if not break the story ourselves, then at the very bloody least beat Nick Brown to it. Blogging is a lot easier when you don’t leave your house.

The post Our Modern World: Blue Bottle $20m Sale and Ensuing Media Bonanza appeared first on Sprudge.com.

“San Jose roastery Barefoot Coffee (76 Sunol) soft opened an on-site cafe featuring pastries, hot coffee, cold brew and Dandelion Chocolate bars today (September 26). The grand opening of the so-called Rollup Bar takes place October 5-7 with deals of up to half off.”

Ooh, Dandelion Chocolate, they’re just delish – plus Barefoot is pretty tasty, we had a chance to try some at our recent Cupping California event in San Francisco. Sounds like San Jose jut got a little cooler, although let’s get real here, a fruit rollup bar would be pretty awesome.

Soft opening day at the Barefoot rollup, complete with wacky waving inflatable arm-waving tube man!

The post San Jose: The Barefoot Coffee Soft Opens A Rollup Pop-Up appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Brought to the world by the same people behind New York City’s Chelsea Market, the PCM project is a massive undertaking, one that won’t be completed until 2014. But the people building the damn thing need coffee, as do the folks securing tenants and hosting meetings in the PCM marketing center, and so Batdorf are actually the first tenants to open up their doors for the project, building out an 1000 foot cafe space in a former automobile service center next to the main building itself.

We dig that big public porch, y’all. Space looks stunning.

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