Charity Buzz, some sort of charitable online celebrity dating/escort website, is selling meet-ups with some of Hollywood’s (and Silicon Valley’s) most eligible hunks (and Paula Deen!) for the The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights Spring 2013 Auction.

Currently, you’re able to have a glass of wine with Francis Ford Coppola for around $4,000 – or act in a scene with that Chris Hemsworth in a Michael Mann film for a little over 3K. But coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook? That’s gonna set you back $125K.

Start-up iPhone app companies? Die hard Apple enthusiasts? Who on Earth would shell out $125k for a Frappuccino with Tim Cook? (We say Frappuccino because the Cupertino headquarters serves Starbucks exclusively.)

Cook and Jobs used to drink coffee together all the time.

Are you interested in having an hour of Tim Cook time? Consider bidding at Charity Buzz.

The post An $125,000 Cup Of Coffee? Sure, If It’s With Apple’s CEO appeared first on Sprudge.com.

We’re honored, surprised, and delighted to report that we’ve received the 2013 Distinguished Author / Publishers Award from the SCAA. We will accept this award in Boston at the opening ceremonies of the 25th Annual SCAA Exposition, The Event, happening April 11th-14th.

Here’s more on what the award is:

Here’s more from the awards announcement:

“Sprudge.com is the world’s most popular and shared coffee publication. Started in 2009 by two childhood friends, the website has grown into a daily source of coffee news, event coverage, industry insight and original journalism, drawing from a diverse pool of contributors representing the very best coffee writers working today.  The website is proudly dedicated to providing thorough coverage of specialty coffee competitions, including the United States regional barista circuit, the United States Barista Championship, and the World Barista Championship. Along the way their work has been featured, linked, or excerpted by countless popular news sources, all with the goal of presenting coffee culture, baristas, importers, producers and roasters in a positive light.”

Previous recipients.

“Sprudge.com is partnered with a diverse roster of companies, representing all facets of the specialty coffee industry – from machine manufacturers to green coffee importers, from cafe consultants to roaster / retailers, and much more.  The website remains a labor of love, wholly owned and operated by two friends who met each other at the tender age of 14. As their website grows, they invite you to join them as readers and supporters. This award is a great honor for them, and they hope to do it justice for many years to come.”

We’ll be there in tuxes at the SCAA Awards Ceremony in Boston, unless this is all a dream, in which case Justin Bieber will accept the award for Zachary, and Jordan will be busy starting third base (and batting .312) for the Seattle Mariners. Either way, we’re renting tuxes.

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New York City is buzzing with events this weekend! NYC – where the “C” stand for coffee! There are two really cool coffee events happening on Saturday, November 10th – and to the untrained eye they seem to be clashing – but if you play your cards right you can make it to both and still have enough time for Le Bingo with Linda Simpson at Le Poisson Rouge.

Bloomingdale’s Flagship. 59th and Lex, girl.

Eight words: Bloomingdale’s Breville Latte Art Throwdown, Housewares On Six! Joe Coffee, Breville, and World Barista Champion Michael Phillips have teamed up to share drinks, skills, and the thrills of a latte art challenge. Breville’s Facebook has all the details, including the full schedule:

Join us on Saturday as we host an espresso event with Joe Coffee and Bloomingdale’s. Sign up for a master class with World Barista Champion Michael Phillips, or watch New York City baristas face off in a friendly espresso competition. Feel free to drop by any time during the afternoon to get a hands-on demo, chat with the baristas, and get some coffee.

Sounds great, right? And then, in Brooklyn:

Smith Canteen realness. (Photo via Project Latte)

Carroll Garden’s Smith Canteen will host Katie Carguilo and Oliver Strand for an evening of signature espresso drinks and pairing pastries from their in house pastry chef Stephanie Alexander. Mini pain au chocolat with jasmine infused chocolate? Lemon shaker tart? Yes, please. Canteen says:

Carguilo will be our guest barista from 3 to 5 p.m.  She will be crafting expertly pulled espresso drinks and two specialty drinks of her own creation.

At 5 p.m., Carguilo will sit down with coffee journalist and author Oliver Strand to talk about her championship win, how to make the perfect cup, East Coast versus West Coast coffee and more. The Q&A and reception that follows will be open to the public.

And then! Le Bingo with Linda Simpson! If you’ve never been, this is certifiably the most fabulous bingo night in the world.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

We asked Brooklyn local and United States Barista Champion Katie Carguilo to help us get to all three events via public transportation. Save that cab fare for bingo cards!

12:00PM: Start your day at Bloomingdales. Housewares on six. Grab a drink and talk to World Barista Champion Michael Phillips from Handsome Coffee Roasters. Stick around for the master class (RSVP! Call 212-705-2400) and then watch the barista throwdown.

2:15PM: Walk to Lexington Ave & 63rd St F train station. Take the F to Carroll St. Smith Canteen is just around the corner on Smith Street.

3:00PM: Spend the early evening with me, grab my USBC winning signature drink or this new concoction I’ve been working out – then watch me and Oliver Strand dish.

6:30PM: Hop back on that F to Broadway/Lafeyette, walk five blocks down Bleecker street to Le Poisson Rouge. Get a drink and buy a least four bingo cards. Show starts at 7:30PM!

Any questions?

The post NYC: Baristas, Bloomingdale’s, Brooklyn, and Bingo! appeared first on Sprudge.com.

A pilot project will bring two double-decker Starbucks cars to an Inter-City rail line between St Gallen and Geneva, beginning in 2013.

The shops will be staffed by the Federal Railways restaurant workers and, if successful, there might be more rolling Starbucks through the Swiss countryside.

All aboard! For more on trains, and the act of riding them, please see below:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

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Meet Iain Evans and Mel Winter, the editors of the new South African coffee magazine The Coffee Mag. Iain and Mel ask, “are you ready for the kick?”

This website and magazine aims to be a platform for communication between the obsessive coffee professionals and the avid coffee drinkers, nurturing a growing coffee community and culture. Think about your local coffee spot – it has already begun. You are those people!

We travel the country constantly searching for interesting coffee stories. We are the people you see in your local cafes; laptops out, coffee supply constant. Like you, we’re into buying beans from our local roastery and sourcing new supplies of precious beans to share with like-minded people who are as passionate as we are about fresh, gourmet coffee. We’re experimenting with home brewing methods, and in the coming pages of our mag and these blogs, we’ll share what we learn, and we’d love you to share yours with us too.

Color us curious! The first 10,000 folks that sign up for this new quarterly magazine (within South Africa) receive a free quarterly subscription!

The website it just a scream. They have a comic strip called the Daily Grind:

Find out more here! Glegh!

The post South Africa: New Magazine Offers Up Free Subscriptions appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Baristas will be filmed in the Seattle area, and is slated to “follow the scantily clad female employees of the Baristas Coffee Company, which has locations in five states.” No word yet on which station might pick up the new reality series, but A. Smith & Co. are the folks behind shows currently running on TruTV and Versus, plus The Choice (on Fox) and Hell’s Kitchen / Kitchen Nightmares, both Gordon Ramsey vehicles. This means Baristas may well be developed for and aired on a cable network in the coming months.

This is Scott, the president of Baristas:

Available footage on the Baristas Youtube channel – which seems to contain most of a pilot episode – yield important details on the upcoming production. We’ve deduced:

*The Baristas girls all live in the same luxury manse.

* The Baristas girls routinely get into physical confrontations with one another. [Note: the above two links are the same link.]

* Coffee service itself is happening on a grimy-looking La San Marco two-group.

* Girls at Baristas are regularly pressured into making sales, and compete with each other for sales leads.

It’s like The Bachelorette meets Pimps Up, Ho’s Down, out for coffee together at Central Perk. Also they’re releasing a luxury line of “adult” coffee ice cream, because this feature needed more outrageous details.

Still, no network or air date has been announced. Stay tuned to Sprudge for more Baristas details, obviously.

The post Bikini Barista Reality TV Is Totally Actually Happening appeared first on Sprudge.com.

There are billboards for the Soyuz Coffee Roasting “Barista” blend all over St. Petersburg! Serial Greek Barista Champion Stefanos Domtiosis towers over all.  (Source: Facebook)

The post St. Petersburg: Towering 12 Foot Stefanos Domatiosis appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Famed tennis referee Lois Goodman, 70, is behind bars and faces charges for murder with a coffee implement. Back in April, her husband Alan Goodman, 80, was found dead. Mrs. Goodman told police that he fell down the stairs, but the police weren’t convinced, and now she’s being charged with murder.

Lois Goodman says she’s looking forward to fighting these charges. Until found guilty by a jury of her peers, we’re shying away of giving her the coveted “Schmuck of the Week” title, but oof, can you imagine? Being beaten senseless with a coffee mug? We’d at least want to be murdered with something classy, like a Heath Ceramics number, or something from the Stumptown Arik Roper mug set. Then at least we’d have death with dignity.

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If there’s one thing Vogue Magazine is certain of, it’s that Chelsea Clinton loves coffee. In the recent issue, Vogue profiles the younger Mrs. Clinton, and delves into the evolution of her policy beliefs, her electrifying public speechifying abilities, and perhaps most importantly, her battlefield delegation skills through all phases of the busy Manhattan coffee shop experience.

“You get us seats, I’ll stand in line and order our drinks. What are you drinking?” The reporter responds, “A latte!” Clinton asks, “Whole, skim, 2 percent or soy?” Chelsea Clinton, you’re unstoppable. Read more from Vogue:

Chelsea Clinton is representative of her generation in a surprising number of ways: She has a highly developed sense of irony; a late-bloomer aspect; a promiscuous career ambition; an unusually close relationship with her parents—and, above all, an obsession with elaborate coffee drinks. Indeed, I have been to coffee shops all over this great nation with Chelsea Clinton as I trailed her this spring and summer. Once, in Joplin, Missouri, we were hanging around a parking lot waiting for the camera crew she works with in her role as special correspondent for NBC, and her attention kept drifting across the street. “I am pretty intrigued by Joplin Avenue Coffee Company,” she said. A few moments later, her chief of staff, Bari Lurie, appeared to say the camera guys were an hour away. “I don’t know what we should do,” said Lurie. “When in doubt,” said Clinton, “coffee.”

So, Chelsea for President 2024, right? We’ll blink “sure” on our retina ballots.

Have YOU served Chelsea Clinton coffee, and was she super nice about the whole thing? Sound off in the comments below!

The post Chelsea Clinton Loves Coffee, Country, Political Destiny appeared first on Sprudge.com.

There’s a silver lining in every dark rain cloud, or so they say, and while we don’t condone violence or theft, this is perhaps the greatest single headline of all time: “Woman Pours Coffee Over Woman’s Head, Hands Back Cup, Punches Her.”

The scene is as follows: Two not particularly nice Waffle House customers in Niceville, Florida, attempted to walk away from their smothered-n-covered’s with purloined WH mugs. This is basically the only thing you aren’t allowed to do in a Waffle House. When a good samaritan tried to stop them, the undisclosed victim got mugged…literally! From the article:

The incident occurred at the Waffle House on John Sims Parkway on Aug. 8.

According to a Niceville Police Department incident report, a man and woman were leaving the restaurant and took their coffee mugs with them.

They were intercepted by another woman (the report did not indicate if she were a Waffle House employee), who confronted them about the coffee mugs.

The man poured out his coffee on the ground and handed her the cup.

The woman poured coffee over the victim. The victim took the mug from her and turned around to go back into the restaurant. The woman then punched her in the back.

Perhaps an all-time low for the human race, or just another day at the Waffle House? Either way…

The post Awful Waffle: Florida Burners In Waffle House Mug Heist appeared first on Sprudge.com.