Remember when the recession started and people began losing their cars, homes, jobs and minds? Well while they were all busy thinking of themselves in panicky fits to fix their lives, nobody was worrying about the real victims – coffee retailers. When the American economy tanked, companies like Starbucks faced losing billions of dollars if they didn’t take the right precautions and protect themselves. For Starbucks, that meant closing hundreds of stores, including in places where they had stores across the street from each other, and in some cases even on top of each other. Yes, friends, things were scary for Starbucks. But don’t worry anymore, because the coffee giant recently reclaimed its throne as America’s numero uno coffee destination. Unfortunately, that’s bad news for the mom and pop coffee stores that it climbed over. Sorry, Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s.
Before you go out and pound a few dozen treinta iced lattes, though, you should be aware that coffee has long been thought to have a serious impact on our blood pressure levels. Fortunately, some science guys with their glasses and white coats concluded a 6-year study recently that proved that coffee has no serious effect on blood pressure. In fact, this study of more than 170,000 people showed that there is essentially no difference in the blood pressure of a person drinking on cup each day and a person drinking five or more cups. Of course there’s a huge difference in their blood pressure from things like lack of sleep and an aversion to blinking, but that’s an entirely different story.
So how does coffee hurt us, if at all? Try your wallet. That pesky weak American dollar is causing the costs of producing coffee to rise to $3 a pound, as is terrible weather in some of the world’s biggest coffee-producing countries. This means that our favorite coffee shops, including that aforementioned tale of American gumption Starbucks, are facing the realities of cutting costs or services to stay afloat. But we as customers can also help. For instance, I went to my favorite coffee shop this morning and told them to forget the cup and pour the java straight into my mouth. Problem solved.
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- America’s long nightmare is over. Starbucks is back on top. (Retail Traffic)
- Coffee’s been getting a bum rap with high blood pressure. (Opposing Views)
- Coffee prices are the highest in 34 years. Who says gold is the safe investment? (Chicago Business)
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- A supermarket in New Zealand accidentally opened on Easter Sunday when it was supposed to be closed. A computer glitch caused the doors to open and in came customers. How much did they make off with? Not much. In fact, most of them paid through self checkout. Suckers. (Gizmodo)
- As Donald Trump has battled the White House in birth certificate-gate, it appears that The Donald should be answering some questions of his own. Like – if he’s going to be so tough on China, why is his clothing line produced there? (Salon)
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- Here in America, us caffeine freaks are responsible for sucking down more than 400 million cups of coffee. PER DAY. That’s 146 billion cups of coffee per year in the U.S. alone. I’d figure out how much that costs but I’M SO WIRED!!! (Coffee Statistics)
- Seriously, though, with more than 100 billion people drinking coffee in America each year, we are spending, on average, $164.71 on coffee each. I guess that sounds like a lot until I isolate “Starbucks” on my bank statement. (Professor’s House)
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